Plants prostrate to spreading or erect, mostly thinly pubescent. Leaf blades linear to lanceolate, obovate, round, or spatulate. Stems sometimes disarticulating at each node. Inflorescences: bracts mostly 2, opposite, scalelike or if leaflike then similar to basal leaves only reduced, occasionally deciduous in early anthesis, with or without awns. Involucres cylindric to narrowly turbinate, campanulate, or urceolate, occasionally ventricose basally, 3-,5-, or 6-toothed, with or without membranous or scarious margins; teeth erect to spreading or divergent, connate at least 1/ 2 their length, typically shallow, mostly unequal, with alternating long and short awns, often with anterior one longest. Flowers 1(-2), white to pink or rose, maroon or purple, or yellow, thinly pubescent at least along midribs abaxially; stamens 3-9; filaments adnate at base of floral tube or faucially; filaments sometimes connate into short tube. Achenes brown, lenticular or globose-lenticular, or 3-gonous. Seeds: embryo straight or rarely curved.

Species 39 (31 in the flora): w United States, nw Mexico, sw South America.

Most species of subg. Amphietes are found in California. Of the others, one is known only from southernmost Peru to central Chile (Chorizanthe commissuralis J. Rémy), while the rest are known only from Baja California, Mexico. Those include C. inequalis S. Stokes, C. turbinata Wiggins, C. mutabilis Brandegee, C. rosulenta Reveal, C. pulchella Brandegee, C. flava Brandegee, and C. interposita Goodman. The latter is the only member of sect. Clastoscapa, the only section of subg. Amphietes not found in our flora.