Dipsacaceae (inclusive Triplostegia)

Annual, biennial or perennial herbs, rarely woody semi-shrubs or shrubs. Leaves opposite, sometimes whorled, often in a basal rosette; entire or toothed to deeply pinnatifid or pinnately dissected, stipules 0; indumentum of uni- or multicellular, sometimes glandular hairs. Flowers in dense involucrate capitula; receptacle almost flat, hemispherical or cylindrical, mostly with scaly bracts, when scales absent with hairs or naked. Flowers bisexual, marginal flowers often female, 4- or 5-merous, actinomorphic or zygomorphic, with an epicalyx of 4 fused and strongly modified bracts surrounding the ovary; calyx small, cupuliform or rarely divided into 4–5 lobes or more often modified into 4 or 5 spiny setae, in some genera setae pappus-like and multiplied to up to 25, persistent or non-persistent; stamens 4 (in one species 2), filaments attached to corolla tube; gynoecium inferior with one fertile carpel, unilocular, ovule anatropous, unitegmic; style slender, stigma 1-, 2- or 3-lobed or capitate; flowers proterandrous. Fruit a dry, single-seeded nutlet (cypsela) enclosed in the quadrangular or cylindrical, ± lignified epicalyx, in Triplostegia a double epicalyx; the latter variously differentiated, often surmounted by a persistent calyx; Knautia with a fleshy appendage (elaiosome). Seeds with a large spathulate embryo and fleshy, oily endosperm. x = 5, 7, 8, 9, 10.