Perennials, 20–100 cm; taprooted, woody, with caudexlike branches 2–15 cm, or leafy stems arising directly from roots; single plants usually bowl-shaped, with up to a 65 cm lateral spread). Stems erect or ascending (often purple, distal branches stiff, spreading-ascending, without axillary leaf tufts), glabrous or sparsely strigose (hairs straight, ascending-appressed), sometimes minutely glandular distally. Leaves cauline; blades 1-nerved (often sharply folding in narrower forms), filiform or linear to oblanceolate, 10–65 × 1–5(–10) mm, relatively even-sized (mid and distal longer than inter-nodes), margins entire, ciliate (cilia ascending-appressed, thick-based), faces glabrous or sparsely strigose, eglandular. Heads 1 or 2–5 in loosely corymbiform arrays. Involucres 3.2–6.5 × 7–12(–14) mm. Phyllaries in 3–5 series (outer: margins stramineous, with distal, greenish, rhomboid patches; inner: margins narrow, scarious), glabrous or moderately to densely strigoso-hirsute, sparsely and obscurely to densely and prominently minutely glandular. Ray florets 15–60; corollas white to blue, 5–15 mm, laminae not coiling or reflexing. Disc corollas 3.5–5.5 mm (throats slightly indurate, not inflated). Cypselae (1.8–)2.2–3 mm, 2-nerved, faces sparsely strigose; pappi: outer of setae, inner of 19–34 bristles.
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