Robust tufted perennial from a short rhizome. Leaves narrowly lanceolate, 7–30 cm. long, 6–10 mm. wide, firm, gradually tapering to a narrowly obtuse tip. Scapes 1–5, stout, 10–60 cm. high, 8–9-ribbed; sheaths usually shorter than the leaves, loose, the limb subacute. Capitulum depressed-globose, 12–19 mm. diameter, white speckled with darker bracts; involucral bracts large and scarious, as wide as the capitulum, pallid, flushed grey or blackish, ovate to ovate-oblong, 4.5–6.0 mm. long, acute, finally reflexing; floral bracts narrowly oblong, flushed grey, concave, densely white-villous above the middle, long-acuminate; receptacle thinly hairy; flowers trimerous, 3.5–4.5 mm. long. Male flowers: sepals grey, unequally connate below or up to the middle, the two lateral lightly keeled, the third concave, white-pilose across the tips; petals ligular, exserted from the calyx, glandular and white-villous, dimorphic, the longest 2.1–3.5 mm. long; anthers black. Female flowers: sepals oblong, grey, deeply concave, thickened and spongy along the midline and sometimes expanded into a narrow wing, villous along the lower margins inside, white-pilose at the tip; petals and ovary sessile; petals oblong-spathulate, glandular and white-villous upwards, the mid-petal longer. Seeds ellipsoid to broadly ellipsoid, 0.8–1.0 mm. long, mid-brown or reddish brown. Fig. 2/8.
