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 sphaerocephalus 'Arctic Glow' has striking flowers with long last seed pods to give a longer period of interest.