Sonchus

Annual, biennial or perennial herbs or subshrubs; stems usually solitary, erect, and (in Victoria) simple to little-branched and hollow. Leaves basal and cauline, alternate, toothed to pinnatisect; cauline leaves stem-clasping. Capitula sessile to pedunculate, in loosely branched terminal corymbs or panicles, or solitary; involucre cylindric to conical, bracts 3-seriate, unequal, outer ones herbaceous, smaller than inner, inner ones more scarious; receptacle flat, naked or with small scales or hairs, pitted. Florets ligulate, bisexual, yellow; ligules linear, minutely 5-toothed; anthers orange, sagittate at base, with short dark triangular apical appendages; style bilobed, with linear, terete, papillose branches. Cypselas more or less elliptic, compressed, faces 1–5-ribbed, sometimes narrowly winged, smooth or wrinkled; pappus of many free caducous barbellate bristles, and persistent tufts of fine cottony hairs.