Chondrilla

Annual, biennial or perennial herbs; stems erect or ascending, often much-branched. Leaves basal and cauline, alternate, entire to pinnatifid; basal leaves rosetted, more or less runcinate; cauline leaves usually simple, much-reduced, often bract-like. Capitula in terminal and axillary corymbose-paniculate or racemose clusters or solitary along stems, sessile or subsessile; involucre cylindric, bracts in 2 series, unequal, herbaceous; outer bracts minute, spreading; inner bracts linear, erect, (spreading in fruit); receptacle flat, glabrous, pitted. Florets ligulate, bisexual, yellow; ligule broad-linear to cuneate, minutely 5-toothed; anthers sagittate at base, with triangular appendages at apex; style bilobed, with linear, terete, papillose branches. Cypselas fusiform, ribbed, with a filiform beak surrounded at base by a ring of scales; pappus of several series of fine bristles, often deciduous with beak of cypsela.