Erect, 18 – 30 cm tall, corymbosely few-branched, leafy all along, arachnoid floccose perennial shrublet. Basal leaves shorty petiolate, oblong-lanceolate, up to ca 10 cm long and ca 4 cm broad, pinnatipartite, rachis thick, narrowly winged,  densely white arachnoid tomentose on both sides, leaf lobes 10 – 12 on each side, 1.8 – 2 cm long, 4 – 5 mm wide, more or less rectangular, acute, midrib apically prolonged into a thin, ca 3 mm long spine, secondary veins very prominent beneath; lower cauline leaves akin to basal; upper stem leaves sessile, non-decurrent, basally somewhat semicordate-dilated, much reduced in size; uppermost ovate, shortly lobed to spinescent dentate. Capitula solitary, terminal, 2.5 – 3.5 cm in diam. including spines, 28, whitish or almost white  cobwebby hairy. Involucre ovoid-globose, excluding spines 2 – 2.5 cm high, 1.5 – 2 cm across, basally umbilicate, constricted above. Phyllaries ca  60, thick, stiffly leathery, basally dilated, strongly appressed to the triangular prominent space between the lobes and then abruptly terminating in sharp, dark green,  apical glabrescent spines; innermost phyllaries erect, scarious, flexible, long exserted, 2.5 – 3.5 mm broad,  bright reddish yellow, glabrous, shortly acuminate. Receptacular bristles scabrous. Florets 60-70 per capitulum. Corolla rosy, 1.7 – 1.9 (-20) mm long, tube 7 – 8 mm long, limb 10 – 12 mm long with ca 3 mm long lobes. Anther tube rosy, glabrous. Cypselas flattened, 4 – 4.5 mm long, ca 2 mm wide, brownish, indistinctly blackish spotted and longitudinally striated, rotundate-truncate at apices, narrowed to the base.