Plants perennial, semi-shrub and glabrous. Stem 10 – 50 cm tall, woody at the base, branches floccose, rigid, thorny or not, divaricately branched, rarely branchlets elongate, virgates-flexuous branchlets with green striations of decurrent bases of leaves. Radical leaves short-lived, subsessile-dilated at the base, 3 – 6 x 0.5 – 1.5 cm, pinnatifid to pinnatisect, retrorse, denticulate, acute; cauline leaves sessile, linear-lanceolate, 0.5 – 3 x c. 0.5 cm, entire, auriculate having long appressed linear appendages adnate to the stem; uppermost often reduced. Synflorescence racemose-spicate. Capitula 0.5 – 2 x 0.2 – 0.5 cm, erect, cylindrical, 4 florets per capitulum; peduncles small, covered with scaly leaves. Involucre phyllaries 14-17, 3-4-seriate, scarious, outer ones ovate-lanceolate, 2 – 5 x 1.5 – 2 mm, acute; innermost phyllaries linear-oblong, 8 – 14 x 2 – 2.5 mm, subobtuse. Florets yellow. Cypselas oblong-ellipsoid, 4 – 6 x 1 – 1.5 mm, 7-9-ribbed, scabrid-hispid, attenuate into 2 – 3 mm long, slender, indistinct in texture and concolorous beak. Pappus 6 – 8 mm long, white.
Two subspecies occur in our area.