Perennial, upto 25 cm tall, occasionally laxly caespitose, with woody caudex covered by blackish-brown petiolar remains of previous years. Leaves in rosetts thinly to thickly coriaceous, adaxially dark green, shiny, glabrous, abaxially light green, glaucous to glabrous, midrib sometimes pilose, basal and lower cauline leaves with inconspicuously sheathing petioles; lamina narrowly linear, 4 – 18 cm long, 1 – 4 mm broad, entire, strongly involute and ciliate on margins, middle and upper cauline leaves sessile, linear-subulate or narrowly ovate, usually 2-6 cm long, 3 – 10 mm broad, ± pilose to sericeus on both sides; uppermost stem leaves numerous below capitula and merging into phyllaries. Capitula solitary, terminal, 2 – 4 cm across. Involucre broadly campanulate, 2 – 3 cm wide. Phyllaries ca 4-seriate, black, imbricate; outermost narrowly triangular-ovate, 12 – 13.5 mm long, 3 – 3.5 mm broad, hairy outside, subobtuse; median phyllaries ovate to linear, 11 – 13.5 mm long, 1.5 – 2.2 mm wide; inner ones linear-oblong, slightly longer than median, ciliate-margined, obtuse or ± acute. Receptacular bristles subulate, 4.2 – 6 mm long. Florets numerous, purple. Corolla tube as long as or a little longer than limb with 3.5 – 4 mm long lobes. Stamens with lacerate woolly basal appendages. Cypselas cylindrical, 3.5 – 5.5 mm long, indistinctly ribbed, pale or straw-coloured, black spotted, smooth. Pappus dirty white, outer bristles terete, straight, inner ones curved, flattened, 9 – 11.5 mm long, basally connate into a ring.