Slender rosulate annual.. Leaves broadly linear, 1.5–3.5 cm. long, 1–3 mm. wide, fenestrate, subacute.. Scapes up to ± 15, 6–17 cm. high, much taller than the small basal rosette of leaves, 4–5-ribbed; sheaths equalling the leaves.. Capitulum depressed-globose, 4–5 mm. diameter, brownish grey to dark grey with a slight sheen, glabrous, the bracts loose and untidy, the flowers visible between; involucral bracts as wide as the capitulum, yellowish grey, scarious, 2.0 mm. long, narrowly obovate, obtuse and sometimes minutely denticulate, reflexing at maturity; floral bracts resembling the involucral but narrower, cuneate-oblanceolate, shallowly incurving, obtuse and minutely denticulate, the inner acute; receptacle villous; flowers trimerous, 1.5–1.7 mm. long, glabrous.. Male flowers: sepals connate into a thinly scarious, grey spathe with free tips, the spathe wide open, only the margins inturned, tips truncate-denticulate; petals very small, included within the calyx, eglandular; anthers black.. Female flowers: sepals oblong with truncate-denticulate tips, laterals lightly keeled, the median similar but slightly narrower; all petals longer than the sepals, narrowly oblanceolate-oblong, eglandular, the median emarginate, laterals bidentate; ovary sessile.. Seeds ellipsoid, 0.4 mm. long, brown with white-papillose reticulations.
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