Annual or short-lived perennial herb 5–75 cm high; stem sometimes woody near the base; branches occasionally reddish or purple-tinged, spreading, sparsely glandular, with sparse long thin hairs to almost glabrous. Leaves dark grey-green, narrowly lanceolate, 1–6 cm long, 0.1–0.7 cm wide, base attenuate, margins obscurely serrate or toothed and often involute, apex spinulose or obtuse, long-pubescent when young but glabrescent with only remnants above near the base. Capitula purple or mauve, 9–15 mm long, solitary on leafy branches but the whole plant resembling a leafy panicle; capitula on stalks 1.5–3.5 cm long, with subulate scale leaves resembling the phyllaries to 2 mm long; phyllaries in several series, narrowly lanceolate, papery, the outermost smallest, 2–12 mm long, 0.5–1.5 mm wide, attenuate towards the spiny apex, short-hairy near the apex (rarely arachnoid-hairy all over); receptacle flat. Outer florets 70–170, tube filiform, distally purple or mauve, 3.5–3.7 mm long, minutely toothed at the apex; style white with purple arms, 5.5–6 mm long with linear arms to 1.5 mm long; central florets 12–33, tube 5.3–8 mm long, slightly widening from a fairly narrow base, distally mauve, hairy, with densely hairy lobes 0.4–0.6 mm long; anthers 2.5–2.7 mm long, with short proximal tails and distal appendages 0.4–0.5 mm long; style white with purple arms, 7–8.8 mm long, apparently unbranched but the short (0.2–0.3 mm long) branches closely parallel and slightly hairy, as is the distal part of the style. Achenes cylindrical, 1–1.9 mm long, hairy; pappus of few (3–5, in central florets often absent?) barbellate bristles 4–7.5 mm long. Fig. 70 (page 351).
