Cirsium Mill.

Perennial or biennial (annual) herbs. Stems spiny-winged from decurrent leaf bases, rarely unarmed. Leaves pinnatifid with spine-tipped teeth at the margins. Capitula homogamous, discoid, loosely aggregated (or large solitary and terminal) on the branches. Phyllaries numerous many-seriate imbricate appressed, ± patent apically and usually spine-tipped, margins entire to spinulose or lacerate. Receptacle flat or convex, densely long-setose. Corollas white to purple (yellowish), narrowly tubular with a broad deeply 5-lobed limb. Fruit achenes ± oblong, compressed smooth, glabrous with a raised annular collar at the apex, attachment scar. Pappus many-seriate; setae plumose, connate into a ring at the base, deciduous (± persistent), longest in the innermost series.

Worldwide: 250-300 species, in North America, Europe, Asia and North Africa.

Malawi: 1 taxon.