Flora of Pakistan, edited by J. Kirschner and J. Štěpánek
Plants annual to perennial, scapose, lactiferous, glabrous or hiary herbs. Leaves in rosettes, usually pinnatifid with runcinate lobes, sometimes entire, glabrous or with arachnose hairs, occasionally also with minute hairs on the floret tube and ligule base. Scapes few to many, hollow, usually developing from the centre of the basal rosette, rarely lateral. Capitula large, homogamous, ligulate, solitary or rarely few. Involucres oblong to campanulate; phyllaries 2-seriate, not changing in fruit, outer phyllaries spreading, recurved. or appressed, inner phyllaries linear to lanceolate, not changing in fruit, both inner and outer phyllarues either smooth, callouse, corniculate, or cornute, marginate or not. Receptacles usually naked, rarely hairy. Ligules 5-toothed, usually yellow and striate, sometimes white or pink; pappuses 1-3-seriate of simple, unequal, scabrous hairs, white, snowy white, creamish, or brownish, usually persistent, bery rarely deciduous; anthers sagittate at the base; cypselas homomorphic, often 4-5-angled, 5-10-ribbed, ribs usually tuberculate, muricate, or spinulate at least distally, some smooth, with a gradually or abruptly formed cone at the top of the body, usually terminated in a beak; style branches slender, obtuse, yellow, greenish, or greyish, sometimes drying black.
Taraxacum is widely distributed in Europe and Asia with a few species also being present in North and South Africa and North and South America. Estimates of the number of taxa in the genus vary from 60-2500, depending on the species concept adopted.