Slender rosulate annual.. Leaves delicate, narrowly subulate to filiform, extended into a long setaceous tip, 1.5–4.5 cm. long, 0.3–0.6 mm. wide, yellowish green.. Scapes 2–6, slightly flexuous, 7–13 cm. high, 4–5-ribbed; sheaths inflated, usually a littleshorter than the leaves, the mouth deeply slit, with acute limb.. Capitulum hemispherical, 3–5 mm. diameter, pale buff with the bracts sometimes edged in black or occasionally mostly blackish; involucral bracts crateriform in 2–3 series, obovate with broadly rounded tip, 1.6–2.3 mm. long, cartilaginous; floral bracts oblong-cuneate, scarious, glabrous or with a few inconspicuous papillae on the back, tip broadly rounded with a central apiculum, upper margin denticulate; receptacle pilose; flowers trimerous, 1.3–2.0 mm. long, subsessile, pale or the perianth parts with dark tips.. Male flowers: sepals ligulate, unequally and variably connate, the lateral lightly keeled, ± glabrous (sometimes a few inconspicuous papillae on the keel), tips emarginate-denticulate; petals rudimentary at the summit of a stipe which equals the calyx, glabrous and eglandular; anthers black.. Female flowers: sepals resembling the male, two lateral falcate, spongy with large cells on the upper keel or sometimes broadened into a slight wing, keel sometimes with a few inconspicuous papillae, third sepal slightly smaller, straight; petals unequal, spongy, eglandular, ± glabrous (a few minute papillae on the upper margins), two narrowly lanceolate-oblong, emarginate, the median larger, lanceolate, 1.3–2.2 mm. long, bidentate; ovary raised on a stipe.. Seeds plumply ellipsoid, 0.4 mm. long, reddish brown, closely transversely white-papillose.