Herbs 30-80 cm tall, biennial. Rootstock covered with petiole remains. Stems grayish white, erect, apically branched, unwinged, thickly cobwebby-felted. Leaves leathery, abaxially grayish white and thickly felted, adaxially green and glabrous. Basal and lower cauline leaves with a brown winged petiole; leaf blade elliptic to oblanceolate, 12-13 × 3-3.5 cm, pinnatisect; segments 6-11 pairs, needle-shaped to triangular-subulate, patent at right angle, margin entire and revolute, midvein thick and abaxially raised, apex narrowed into a rigid ca. 4 mm spine. Middle cauline leaves sessile, similar to lower ones or lanceolate to elliptic-lanceolate, semiamplexicaul. Capitula many. Involucre subspherical, 3-4 cm in diam., densely and fluffily cobwebby. Phyllaries in ca. 9 rows, rigid, leathery, abaxially purplish red; outer phyllaries triangular, 1.8-2.3 × 0.4-0.5 cm, apex narrowed into a rigid 3-4 mm spine; middle and inner phyllaries lanceolate, ca. 2.3 × 0.2-0.4 cm, apex narrowed into a 1.5-2.5 mm spine. Corolla purple to pink, ca. 1.4 cm, tube ca. 7 mm. Achene brown, obovoid, ca. 5 mm, 1-ribbed on each side. Fl. and fr. Jul-Sep.
Stony ground, especially in Ladakh and Lahul, at elevations of 3000-4200 metres. Grassland and gravely places in flooded lands at elevations of 3700-4300 metres in Tibet.
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It is a temperate plant. In the Himalayas it grows between 3,000-4,600 m above sea level.
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