Erect often much-branched and bushy rather woody annual herb 5–70 cm tall; stems tinged purple or brown, white-tomentose, glabrescent. Leaves narrowly to broadly lanceolate, 2–9.5 cm long, 0.2–1.1 cm wide, attenuate at the base, closely shortly apiculate-serrulate, obtuse, aristate-apiculate, discolorous, green and thinly finely tomentose above, white or grey with dense fine tomentum beneath. Capitula discoid, solitary or few in the leaf axils, subsessile or shortly pedunculate; involucre obconic, becoming campanulate-cylindrical in fruit, 12–17.5 mm long, thinly tomentose, glabrescent; phyllaries ± 35–50, 4-seriate, becoming progressively longer inwards, with the outer spreading or recurving and the innermost erect, narrowly triangular-lanceolate or lanceolate, scarious except for thickened mid-rib, attenuate or acuminate-attenuate into a rather soft scabrid-ciliate spine, pale green then stramineous, often purple-tinged, the longest 11.5–15 mm long. Florets 5–15, all hermaphrodite; corolla cream, pale yellow or pale mauve, 4–7 mm long, lobes 2.5–3.5 mm long, anthers long-exserted, styles purple. Achenes turbinate, brown, strongly 10-ribbed, with dense long white ascending apically bifid hairs at the base and between the ribs, 2–3 mm long; pappus of numerous unequal outer strongly barbellate bristles and 10 inner lanceolate acute membranous scales, 4.7–7 mm long. Fig. 4.
