Perennial herb, roots narrowly fusiÂform, rootstock woody, crowned with old fibrous leaf bases with a little brown wool hidden in the axils, flowering stem solitary, erect, 100-450 (-750) mm tall, white-woolly-felted, leafy below, pedunculoid above with 1 or 2 much reduced leaves. Leaves mostly radical, c. 60—200 x 13—33 mm, roughly half the length petiolar, blade elliptic, tapering above and below, apex acute, apiculate, upper surface with minute soft pubescence, usually with some traces of wool as well or persistently thinly greyish silky-woolly, lower surface greyish silky-woolly-felted, strongly 5—7-nerved, more or less reticulate as well, stem leaves similar but soon sessile, broad-based, clasping, shortly decurrent, reduced leaves and bracts lanceolate-acuminate. Heads homogamous, campanulate, c. 4—5 x 3—5 mm, many in a congested globose terminal cluster c. 15—30 mm in diam., or sometimes the compound inflorescence loose with clusters in a corymbose panicle. Involucral bracts in c. 4 series, outer 2 short, inner 2 subequal, equalling flowers, not radiating, all woolly on backs, tips translucent, crisped, obtuse, often erose, pale golden-brown. Receptacle with fimbrils exceeding ovaries. Flowers 18—45. Achenes 1 mm long, cylindric, faintly ribbed, glabrous. Pappus bristles many, equalling corolla, scabrid, bases lightly fused.
