Rosulate annual.. Leaves narrowly linear to linear-subulate, up to 10 cm. long, 1–3 mm. wide, thin, fenestrate, tapering to an acuminate, sometimes setaceously extended tip.. Scapes up to 20, 6–28 cm. high, 5–7-ribbed; sheaths shorter than the leaves, loose, obliquely slit with an obtuse, often splitting limb.. Capitulum globose, 4–6 mm. diameter, when young the blackish floral disc is surrounded by spreading pale involucral bracts, maturing grey and buff, the white-pilose flowers visible among the bracts; involucral bracts obovate to rotund with rounded tip, 1.8–2.1 mm. long, pale straw or greyish tinged, firmly scarious, reflexing at maturity; floral bracts narrowly cuneate or oblanceolate, grey-buff or blackish, glabrous or the inner thinly white-pilose, acute to shortly acuminate; receptacle pilose; flowers trimerous, 1.5–2.0 mm. long.. Male flowers: sepals oblong, the lateral keeled, almost free or connate below the middle into a spathe, tips obtuse, white-pilose or glabrous; petals small, subequal, eglandular, white-pilose; stamens usually 3, rarely up to 6 (see note), epipetalous, black.. Female flowers: sepals usually very unequal, the two lateral navicular, narrowed to the base, a fleshy wing on the centre keel, grey-buff or sepal-body grey with paler wing, wing-width variable, when broad the margin often toothed, white-pilose on the back above the wing or sometimes almost glabrous, tip acute to shortly acuminate; median sepal shorter, linear-oblanceolate or rarely only slightly smaller than the laterals, the tip sparsely white-pilose; petals subsessile, narrowly linear, eglandular, the tips white-pilose, the median a little larger.. Seeds ellipsoid, 0.4 mm. long, brown with rows of white papillae.
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