Biennial to perennial, glabrescent, 15 – 25 cm tall herb with prostrate to ascending shoots. Leaves attenuate to sessile, 10 – 30 cm long, 3 – 8 cm wide (excl. spines), 2-4-lobed, lobes strongly spiny, spines orange-brown and attenuate in upper leaves, uppermost leaves below capitula forming involucel. Capitula ovate, 8 – 12 (-15) mm in diameter, basally rotundate-truncate, attenuate. Phyllaries: outer uniseriate, remotely pectinate, few-spined; inner multiseriate, imbricate, green, each terminating in a orange-brownish narrowed tip. Florets all tubular, rosy. Pappus scaly, twice as long as cypselas.