A tufted perennial (?) herb, all parts grey-woolly, stems annual, often numerous, up to c. 300 mm tall, erect or decumbent then erect, simple or branched from near the base into corymbose panicles, leafy. Radical leaves rosetted, up to c. 70 x 15 mm, mostly oblong-spathulate, sometimes linear-oblong, stem leaves smaller. Heads heterogamous or rarely homogamous, c. 5 x 3 mm, narrowly campanulate, congested in small terminal glomerules surrounded by leafy bracts, glomerules rarely solitary, usually in contracted or spreading corymbÂose panicles. Involucral bracts in 4 series, 2 outer shorter, webbed to subtending leaves with wool, 2 inner longer, equalling or slightly exceeding the flowers, nearly glabÂrous, margins hyaline, tips opaque, rangÂing from a small apiculus to a long acuminate squarrose point, whitish, creamy, pink or red-purple, all bracts soon caduÂcous, the whole head disintegrating. ReceptÂacle nearly smooth. Flowers 12—36 (0—) 1-8 ("female"), 8-27 ("bisexual"). Achenes c. 0,75 mm long, obscurely angled, with myxogenic duplex hairs or glabrous. Pappus bristles copious, in several series, minutely scabrid, bases cohering lightly by patent cilia.
