Rosulate herb, probably a short-lived perennial.. Leaves linear to linear-lanceolate, up to 7 cm. long, 1.5–4 mm. wide, thin, fenestrate, acute.. Scapes up to 25, very slender, flexuous, 7–35 cm. high, sharply 4–5-ribbed; sheaths ± equalling the leaves, deeply obliquely slit with long acute limb.. Capitulum 4–6 mm. diameter, subglobose to slightly dome-shaped, greyish with mealy white pubescence or sometimes dark grey, the involucral bracts yellowish, floral bracts neatly imbricate, the flowers hidden except for the largest female petal at maturity; involucral bracts broadly oblong to lanceolate-oblong with rounded tips, firm, often thinly mealy-pubescent, slightly smaller than the capitulum width and adpressed to it in several series; floral bracts narrowly cuneate-spathulate, scarious, uniformly grey or with pallid tips, incurved, white-pilose on the widest part, sharply acute; receptacle villous; flowers trimerous, shortly pedicellate.. Male flowers 1.6–2 mm. long: sepals partially connate into a thin scarious spathe open on one side or sometimes almost free, oblong, the laterals concave, all white-pilose towards the obliquely truncate tips; petals included within the calyx, eglandular, white-pilose, the median 0.5–0.75 mm. long; anthers blackish.. Female flowers 2–2.5 mm. long: sepals subequal, grey, narrowly oblanceolate-oblong, obtuse, thinly white-pilose towards the tips, the lateral two falcate, very lightly keeled, the median almost flat; petals raised on a short stipe, unequal, spongy, eglandular, white-ciliate on the upper margins, white-hairy also on both sides of the blade especially on the larger median petal, this longer than the sepals, elliptic with narrow base, 2–2.2 mm. long, the laterals smaller, narrowly oblanceolate.. Seeds subglobose, ± 5 mm. long, reticulate (reticulations finally white).
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