Rosulate herb, sometimes developing a short branching rhizome.. Leaves in a dense tuft, linear-subulate to lanceolate, 2.0–5.5 cm. long, 2–3(–5) mm. wide, outwardly curving, spongy, acute.. Scapes up to 25, slender, 7–35 cm. high, 5–6(–7)-ribbed; sheaths equalling the leaves, loose, obliquely slit, the scarious limb splitting into 2–3 lobes.. Capitulum dirty white, 4–5 mm. diameter, initially globose with a flat base, becoming slightly elongated and dome-shaped with intruded base at maturity; involucral bracts shorter than the capitulum width, 1.5–1.8 mm. long, obovate-oblong, rounded, light brown, coriaceous at base becoming scarious and greyish upwards; floral bracts broadly spathulate, cuspidate, incurving, scarious, pale grey-brown, thinly white-pilose on the widest part; receptacle columnar, villous; flowers 1.3–1.8 mm. long, trimerous, pedicellate.. Male flowers: sepals partially connate into an infundibular spathe, the laterals concave, the median flat, grey, tips obtuse and white-pilose; petals subequal, glandular and white-pilose, the largest 0.5–0.7 mm. long, shortly exserted from the calyx; anthers brown.. Female flowers: sepals subequal, grey, deeply concave, lightly keeled, narrowly winged or at least spongily thickened on the centre keel, white-pilose with short stout hairs on back and margins towards the tip, margins usually pilose inside with longer hyaline hairs, lateral sepals 1.0–1.3 mm. long, the median slightly narrower, tip subacute; petals subequal, linear-oblanceolate, glandular, white-pilose at the tips, pilose on the inner blade with longer hyaline hairs.. Seeds elliptic, 0.5 mm. long, brown, transversely white-papillose.
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