Annual herb with a woody taproot, stems mostly 70—30 mm long, erect or spreading, subsimple or well-branched from the base, thinly white-woolly, leafy. Leaves very variable in size, lowermost up to 50 x 12 mm, upper mostly c. 10—15 x 2—5 mm, spathulate or oblong-spathulate to linear, base narrowed, apex subacute, mucronate, both surfaces greyish-white woolly. Heads homogamous or very rarely heterogamous, cylindric-campanulate, c. 3 x 2 mm, few to many on short stalks crowded at the branch tips, these often in loose corymbose panicles. Involucral bracts in 5—6 series, loosely imbricate, outer short, pellucid, acute, pale brown or occasionally reddish, bases loosely woolly, inner longer, sub-equal, about equalling flowers, tips opaque milk-white, sometimes suffused pink, or crimson above the stereome, or rarely creamy, very obtuse, crisped, minutely radiating. Receptacle smooth or nearly so. Flowers 14—27, occasionally 1 or 2 ("female"). Achenes 0,75 mm long, usually with myxogenic duplex hairs or occasionally glabrous. Pappus bristles many, equalling corolla, scab rid, bases cohering lightly by patent cilia.
