The only known species is Warionia saharae, an endemic of Algeria and Morocco, and it is locally known in the Berber language as afessas, abessas or tazart n-îfiss.

[citation needed] It is an aromatic, thistle-like shrub of ½–2 m high, that contains a white latex, and has fleshy, pinnately divided, wavy leaves.

Because Warionia is deviant in many respects from any other Asteraceae, different scholars have placed it hesitantly in the Cardueae, Gundelieae, Mutisieae, but now genetic analysis positions it as the sister group to all other Cichorieae.

Wariona is an aromatic shrub, usually between ½–2 m, occasionally only 15 cm or up to 3 m high, that has a network of latex-carrying canals throughout the plant with sticky, white, milky latex.

The bell-shaped involucre consists of four to five rows of green bracts, sometimes tinged purple at the stretched tip and with a papery irregularly fine dentate edge.

[1] The plants produce a pungent smell when touched, due to the aromatic oil, which contains 42–53% β-eudesmol, 17½% trans-nerolidol, 5–8½% linalool and about 2½% guaiol.

[citation needed] When damaged, the plants ooze a very sticky white latex, which, like in the other Cichorioideae, has a high triterpene content.

[1] Jean Pierre Adrien Warion collected specimens in 1865 and 1866, south-west of the Algerian coastal mountain range.

These were named Warionia saharae and described by George Bentham and Ernest Cosson, in the Bulletin of the Société botanique de France in 1872.

In 1991 however, Hansen, who made a thorough morphological analysis of the Mutisieae sensu lato, suggested Warionia would be closer related to the Cardueae due to its spiny pollen, the bell-shape of the florets and the stiff hairs on the style.

[1] Warionia saharae is an endemic of Morocco between Tamanar, Ifni, Erfoud and Figuig, and of Algeria, in the Naâma Province and the Béni Ounif District.

It grows on slopes of the High Atlas, Anti-Atlas and Saharian Atlas, along the coast of southern Morocco, and in the desert, on mafic and siliceous rock, at altitudes between sea level and 1300 m.[1] At Ifni it was found growing together with Euphorbia echinus, E. obtusifolia and Senecio anteuphorbium.