Low perennial, forming clusters of small rosettes from a branching rhizome.. Leaves lanceolate, tapering from broad base to narrow obtuse tip, 3–7 cm. long, 5–8 mm. wide, firm, outwardly curving.. Scapes up to ± 6, very short, the capitula remaining in the leaf rosette and sometimes subsessile, 3–4-ribbed; sheaths open nearly to the base, embedded among the woolly leaf-bases.. Capitulum dark grey with light straw-coloured involucral bracts, 5–9 mm. diameter; involucral bracts forming a campanulate cup around the flowers, coriaceous, 2.2–3.2 mm. long, suborbicular, rounded across the thinner tips, spreading at maturity; floral bracts narrowly obovate, flushed grey, thinly white-pilose, subacute; receptacle glabrous; flowers trimerous, 2.6–2.8 mm. long.. Male flowers: sepals dark grey, obovate-oblong, unequally connate below, white-pilose on the upper back; petals subequal, glandular and white-villous; anthers black.. Female flowers: sepals blackish, oblong to obovate-oblong, concave and indistinctly keeled, white-pilose at the subacute tips; petals subequal, narrowly oblong-spathulate, glandular and white-pilose at the tips, pilose with hyaline hairs on the inner face.. Seeds broadly ellipsoid, 0.7 mm. long, dark reddish brown.
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