Picnomon
Annual herbs; stems erect, spiny-winged. Leaves mostly cauline, alternate, pinnatifid with few lobes, lobes spine-tipped. Capitula cylindrical to narrow-campanulate, terminal, in corymbs or clusters, or solitary, sessile or nearly so; involucral bracts in several series, unequal, recurved, with a pinnate spinose yellow apical appendage, dorsally arachnoid below the appendage; receptacle virtually flat, setose. Florets tubular, bisexual, purple; corolla deeply 5-lobed; anthers shortly tailed at base, with subulate appendages at apex; style bilobed, with linear branches not or only slightly diverging only at apex, appendages absent. Cypselas obloid to obovoid, compressed, with a depressed subapical rim and rounded central projection, attachment scar basal to lateral, glabrous; pappus of several series of plumose bristles connate in a ring at base, deciduous as a unit.
A monotypic genus from south-western Europe to Afghanistan.
Sometimes included within Cirsium from which it differs significantly in the sessile capitula and the recurved, divided spinose involucral bract appendages.
Spinning
