Perennial forming clusters of leaf rosettes from a short rhizome clothed in roots and old leaves.. Leaves lanceolate, 4–10 cm. long, 3–5 mm. wide, thick and spongy, yellow-green, tapering uniformly to an acute, hard, yellow-brown tip, woolly in the axils with long matted hairs.. Scapes few, often solitary, 25–65 cm. high, 0.6–0.9 mm. in diameter, 6–8-ribbed; sheaths usually clearly longer than the leaf rosette, loose, the mouth scarious, obliquely slit with a rounded limb or becoming lacerate.. Capitulum depressed-globose, 8–12 mm. diameter, grey becoming white; involucral bracts shorter than the capitulum width, ± 3 mm. long, yellow, brown or coppery,cartilaginous, broadly elliptic to oblong with obtuse or lacerate tips, somewhat reflexed at maturity; outer floral bracts resembling the involucral, narrowly oblong-cuneate, acuminate, grading into the grey inner bracts, these scarious with a thicker midline, white-hairy below the cuspidate tip; receptacle pilose, sometimes sparsely; flowers trimerous.. Male flowers ± 5 mm. long: sepals narrowly oblong, the two laterals keeled, third flat, connate into a grey spathe with free, white-hairy, subacute tips; petals ligulate, exserted from the calyx, unequal with the longest up to 3.5 mm. long, white-villous at the tips, white-pilose with shorter hairs on the inner blade; anthers brownish black.. Female flowers: sepals resembling the male calyx, connate into a grey spathe with free, white-hairy tips; petals raised on a short villous stipe, unequal, narrowly oblanceolate, the longest 3 mm. long, clawed and clearly exserted from the calyx, the other two 2 mm. long, white-hairy at the tips, conspicuously villous with spreading, hyaline, septate hairs ± 1 mm. long from the lower blade; ovary sessile.. Seeds ellipsoid, brown, 0.75 mm. long.
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