Cultivated varieties of Echinops are rather tall herbaceous perennials, with large spherical heads of flowers, usually pale purplish blue. The wild species are often much smaller, but in our opinion much more impressive, with bright blue, purplish or nearly white flowers, highly attractive to butterflies, and silvery grey, very prickly foliage.

Echinops ritro 'Veitch's Blue' is a striking architectural plant with silver thistle leaves and tight globes of brilliant steely blue flowers.