Description :

• Herbs or sometimes subshrubs or shrublets; latex sometimes present
• Leaves alternate or sometimes rosulate, entire or dentate-pinnatisect to lobed, very often spiny or spinulose or unarmed
• Capitula discoid, disciform or 'radiate' (radiant: not true ray florets); solitary or corymbose, sometimes clustered
• Involucral bracts imbricate in several rows, chartaceous to scarious, often spine-tipped or with fimbriate-ciliate, lacerate or variously shaped appendages; innermost bracts rarely much elongated, spreading and coloured, simulating rays
• Receptacle mostly densely setose, rarely areolate with fringed or scaly pit margins, paleate or epaleate
• Florets regular or slightly irregular; mostly with slender tube and deeply or shallowly 5-lobed limb; outer florets sometimes elongated and radiating, sometimes tubular and irregularly few-lobed; all or central florets bisexual; outer florets sometimes female or neuter; functionally male and female florets in separate capitula in some Cirsium spp.; florets red, pink, purple, violet or blue, less frequently yellow or orange
• Anthers calcarate and distinctly caudate; tails entire or fringed, rarely very short; apical appendage elongate, acute to acuminate and often somewhat thickened and rounded at apex, flat; endothecial tissue mostly polarised
• Filaments often papillose-pilose or glabrous, rarely connate to a tube
• Style with rather long, linear, dorsally papillose-pilose, sometimes connate style branches and with ring of hairs on a thickening beneath branches, rarely bilobed or with short branches; hairs acute
• Cypselas oblong to obovoid-obconical, often laterally somewhat compressed or angular, generally glabrous or sometimes sparsely pubescent, or more densely sericeous, pale yellowish brown or frequently with dark brown to blackish streaks or spots, or entirely brown-blackish, mostly with distinct apical rim
• Pappus of scabrid, barbellate or plumose bristles, sometimes deeply cleft, or of scales, or a short corona; bristles in 1 to several rows, subequal or very unequal and gradually longer inwards; simple or double with inner row of bristles, hairs or scales, rarely totally absent

Nomenclature:

• *Cardueae
  • Cassini: 155 (1819)
  • Pope: 49 (1992)
  • Bremer: 134 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Genera 83, Eurasia and North Africa, few genera in tropical Africa and North America, few in South America and Australia
• Southern Africa : Genera 6, species 12, mostly weeds

References:

• BREMER, K. 1994. Asteraceae , cladistics & classification . Timber Press, Portland, Oregon
• CASSINI, A.H.G. DE. 1819. In Journal de physique, de chimie, d'histoire naturelle et des artes 88
• POPE, G.V. 1992. 97. Compositae . Flora zambesiaca 6,1

Resources:

• Key to Asteraceae tribes
• Key to *Cardueae genera

• *Cardueae genera: