Perennials, 100–200 cm, herbage usually ± tomentose, spiny. Stems usually erect, simple or branched. Leaves basal and cauline; sessile or petiolate; blade margins dentate to pinnately 1–3-pinnately lobed or divided, lobes and teeth spiny, faces ± tomentose, sometimes glandular. Heads discoid, many, each with 1 floret, sessile, in pedunculate, spheric secondary heads. Secondary involucres of reflexed, laciniate-pinnatifid bracts. Primary involucres ellipsoid, subtended by bristles. Phyllaries many in several series, unequal, lanceolate (outer) to linear (inner), entire, apices sometimes expanded and fringed, not spine-tipped. Receptacles turbinate, bearing elongate subulate scales. Florets 1 per primary head; corollas white to greenish, blue-gray, blue, or purple, tubes elongate, throats very short, lobes linear; anther bases sharply tailed, apical appendages narrowly triangular, acute; style branches: fused portions with minutely hairy rings, distinct portions divergent, linear-oblong. Cypselae ± cylindric, 4-angled, apices ± truncate, without crowns, densely villous with long, stiff, appressed or ascending, multicellular hairs, attachment scars basal; pappi of many, short, ± connate [or distinct] scales. x = 13, 14, 15, 16.

Distribution

Introduced; Eurasia, Africa.

Discussion

Species ca. 120 (3 in the flora).

Selected References

None.

Lower Taxa

Echinops exaltatus, Echinops ritro, Echinops sphaerocephalus

Key

1	Lobes of leaf blades linear or narrowly oblong	Echinops ritro
1	Lobes of leaf blades lanceolate to triangular	> 2
2	Adaxial leaf faces glandular	Echinops sphaerocephalus
2	Adaxial leaf faces glabrous or sparsely strigose	Echinops exaltatus