Subshrubs or shrubs, erect to spreading, not scapose, 0.2-1.5 × (0.6-)1-13(-16) dm, white-to tannish-tomentose, floccose, or glabrous. Stems spreading to erect, typically without persistent leaf bases, up to 1/ 2 height of plant; caudex stems absent or spreading; aerial flowering stems erect to spreading, slender, solid, not fistulose, 0.05-1.5 dm, lanate, tomentose, floccose, subglabrous, or glabrous. Leaves cauline, 1 per node or fasciculate; petiole 0.1-0.5 cm, tomentose to floccose or glabrous; blade usually elliptic, sometimes linear to obovate, 0.3-3.5 × (0.07-)0.1-1.2 cm, tomentose abaxially, less so or glabrous adaxially, margins occasionally revolute. Inflorescences cymose, compact, often flat-topped, 0.5-6(-12) × 1-10(-13) cm; branches dichotomous, whitish-lanate to brownish-or reddish-tomentose to floccose or glabrate, infrequently green or gray and subglabrous or glabrous; bracts 3, scalelike, linear to triangular, 1-5 mm. Peduncles absent or mostly erect, slender, 0.3-1.5 cm, tomentose to floccose. Involucres 1 per node, turbinate, (1.5-)2-3.5(-4) × 1.3-2.5(-3) mm, tomentose, floccose, subglabrous, or glabrous; teeth 5, erect, (0.3-)0.5-1(-1.7) mm. Flowers 1.5-3(-4) mm; perianth yellow or white to pink, orange, rose, red, or occasionally cream, glabrous; tepals connate proximal 1/ 2/ 5, essentially monomorphic, oblong to obovate; stamens usually exserted, 2.5-4 mm; filaments sparsely to densely puberulent proximally. Achenes brown, 1.5-3 mm, glabrous.
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