Plants usually acaulescent or nearly so (with dense rosettes of leaves and cluster of sessile or subsessile heads), less commonly caulescent and to 45 cm. Stems absent or short, stout, fleshy, usually unbranched, very leafy, villous or tomentose with septate trichomes. Leaves: blades linear to oblong, oblanceolate, or narrowly elliptic, pinnately lobed or often unlobed, longer spines slender or stout, usually 1 cm or less, sometimes unpigmented proximally or tinged pink or purplish, abaxial faces gray-tomentose with fine, non-septate trichomes and/or villous with septate trichomes, adaxial glabrous or thinly villous with septate trichomes. Heads 1–many, sessile or subsessile, crowded. Involucres 1.5–3 cm. P hyllaries: outer and mid lanceolate to ovate, spines slender to stout, 1–12 mm; apices of inner acuminate and entire or abruptly expanded into scarious, erose-toothed appendage. Corollas white or pink-tinged (rarely purple), 22–30 mm, tubes 11.5–16.5 mm, throats 5–10.5 mm, lobes 5–6.5 mm; style tips 3.5–6.5 mm. Cypselae 4.5–6 mm; pappi 20–25 mm. 2n = 34 (as C. foliosum).
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