Erect perennial herbs or subshrubs to 0.6 m tall; stems purplish, terete, slightly striate, solid to slightly fistulose, obscurely puberulous, becoming glabrous. Leaves mostly opposite or ternate; blades narrowly elliptical or narrowly lanceolate, to 9 cm long and 1.7 cm wide, the base narrowly cuneate, the margins subentire to somewhat remotely serrate in the distal half, the apex usually narrowly acute to slightly acuminate, sometimes short acute, the upper surface dark green, shiny with elongated areolae, bullate, scabrid with many scattered hairs, the lower surface pale and fleshy with immersed glandular-punctations, densely short-pilose on the veins; petioles indistinct, usually 5 mm long. Inflorescence with few or no long branches, ending in rather compact corymbose to subumbellate clusters, branches densely puberulous, the ultimate branches mostly 2-9 mm long, not noticeably enlarged above. Heads ca. 6 mm high with mostly 50-100 florets; involucral bracts 20-25, eximbricate, in 2 series, mostly 3-4 mm long, oblong-lanceolate to linear-lanceolate, bicostate, without evident scarious margins, the apex somewhat callose, narrowly acute, the outer surface rather densely hirtellous, with prominent glandular-punctations; receptacle naked; corolla and style branches bluish; corolla 3.0-3.5 mm long, narrowly funnelform, with scattered
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distinct capitate glands on outer surface of tube, limb and lobes, the tube somewhat broad and indistinct, the lobes ca. 0.5 mm long, with papillae only on the inner surface; style branches slightly broader distally, prominent, with minute papillae. Achenes ca. 1.2-1.5 mm long, glabrous; carpopodium asymmetrical; pappus lacking or of a few vestigial broad lobes.
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