Perennial, biennial or annual herbs with taproots or rhizomes. Stem leaves or leafless, leaves pinnately divided or undivided, margins serrate or undentate. Heads homomorphic, ligulate, large or medium-sized or small, usually with numerous ligulate florets, arranged in corymbs, panicles, or racemes at the tips of stem branches, or heads solitary at the top of the stem. Involucre campanulate or terete; involucral bracts 2-4-layered, outer and outermost short or very short, inner and innermost long or longest, all bracts outside covered with various types of indumentum or smooth and glabrous. Receptacle flat, foveolate, fossa margin ciliolate or fimbriate or glabrous. All florets ligulate, bisexual, solid, yellow, rarely purplish red, ligule apically 5-toothed, corolla tube long or pubescent or glabrous; style branches fine, filament base with sagittate appendages. Achenes terete, fusiform, narrowing toward the ends, with a constriction near the apex, with 10-20 raised equal longitudinal ribs, with small or microspiny hairs along the veins or glabrous, apically beakless or rostrate or with a long thin beak. Crown hairs 1-layered, white, as long as or slightly longer than achenes or shorter than achenes, not deciduous or deciduous, hard or soft, basally connected into a ring or not, strigose.

The whole genus consists of about 200 species, which are widely distributed in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the North American continent. There are 22 species in China.

Type (selected type): Crepis biennis L.