Erect, upto 10 cm tall, caespitose perennial herb with many sterile and flowering shoots from  a much branched rootstock. Leaves concolorous, green and glabrous on both sides, linear-lanceolate or subulate-linear, (5-) 8 – 16 (-20) mm long, 1 – 2 (– 3) mm wide, leathery, entire or  revolute-margined, sessile and sheathing at the base, with an apical cartilaginous mucro, ca 1 mm long; uppermost leaves merging into phyllaries. Capitula solitary, terminal, on very short peduncles, subtended all around  by leaves. Involucre  campanulate, 5 – 7 mm in diameter. Phyllaries 3-4-seriate, glabrous, acuminate; outermost phyllaries narrowly ovate, 10 – 14 mm long, basally pale-brownish to purplish, green in upper part, mucronate, median phyllaries narrowly ovate-elliptic, 6 – 9 mm long, pale in lower half, purple above, inner one as long as median. Receptacle bristles brown, ca 1 mm long. Corolla purplish-red, tube 5 – 6 mm long, limb lobes 2.5 – 3 mm  long. Cypselas cylindric, 1.5 – 3.5 mm  long, glabrous, smooth. Pappus 2-seriate, bristles brown, outer 2 – 3 mm long, inner bristles 7 – 8 mm or occasionally longer.