Erect to spreading, up to 30 (-50) cm tall, cobwebby villlose to glabrescent annual herb with ascending, purplish, divaricately branched  shoots from the base. Leaves green on both sides, thinly coriaceous, oblong-lanceolate, basal and lower short-petioled, 20 – 30 cm long, 6 – 8 cm wide, sinuately pinnatifid to ± pinnapartite into oblong-triangular, spinulose-dentate lobes, cauline smaller, 5 – 15 cm long, 1 – 4 cm wide, subsessile, shortly decurrent, more or less amplexicaul, uppermost below capitula sessile, forming involucel  overtopping capitula.  Capitula shortly pedunculate, usually solitary, terminal, ovoid,  2.5 – 4 cm long, 2 – 3 cm across, surrounded by ovate-oblong, spinulose involucelal leaves. Involucre 1.2 – 2.5 cm  long, 1.5 – 2 cm broad. Phyllaries scarious, laxly imbricate; outer oblong-lanceolate, 8 – 10 mm long, 4 – 6 mm wide, entire below, tapering above to hard, pectinate, pale-brown to purplish 4 – 5 mm long  spine-tipped appendage up to 6 – 8 (-10) mm long; inner phyllaries ± lanceolate-linear, with reduced, patent pectinate appendage. Florets shorter than phyllaries, outermost sterile, filiform. Corolla pale yellow–yellow, ca 15 mm long. tube infundibuliform, deeply 3 (– 5)-lobed limb, inner florets bisexual, with 8 – 11 mm long corolla tube and ± oblique 5 lobed limb, lobes 3.5 – 4 mm long.. Cypselas (4.5-)  6– 8 (-9) mm long, 2 – 2.5 mm wide,  pale to dark brown, longitudinally prominently ribbed, with a toothed apical corona. Pappus of 9 – 12, hard, pale bristles, longer or shorter than the cypselas, outer bristles 7 – 8 mm long, patent, inner erect, hardly ca 2.5 mm long, fimbriate.