Perennial acaulescent scapose rosette herb with small rootstock and numerous fleshy roots; scapes erect, 1–4 cm high, thickly white-tomentose, sometimes also with usually dark-coloured glandular setae, unbranched, few-bracteate, bracts small, narrow.. Leaves all in a basal rosette, sessile, broadly (ob-)ovate, elliptic or suborbicular, 8–14 cm long, 4–7 cm wide, rounded and cuneate into a broad sessile base, margins serrulate, apex rounded and slightly acuminate, white-tomentose beneath and often glandular-setulose on midrib and main veins, dark green and glabrous or glandular-setose on midrib above.. Capitula radiate or rarely discoid, solitary and terminal on the scapes; involucre subglobose to campanulate-cylindrical, at first ± araneose, glabrescent, dull maroon, 10–12 mm long; phyllaries 3-seriate, ± 10–40, subequal, lanceolate to oblong-lanceolate, entire or marginally ± laciniate-dentate at least towards the apex, the outermost somewhat narrower, longer and more hairy than the inner, the longest 9–12.5 mm long; receptacle scales narrowly triangular to oblong, acute, with pinkish mauve laciniate-dentate sometimes slightly expanded apices, 10.5–11 mm long.. Ray florets 7–12; corollas 17.5–21 mm long; rays white, oblanceolate-oblong, apically deeply 3-toothed or 3-lobed, sometimes unequally so, (9.5–)12–14 mm long; disc florets ± 25–40; corolla like the rays in colour, ± 11 mm long, lobes narrowly oblong, 3.5–6 mm long, anthers dark-coloured, style branches pinkish mauve.. Achenes not seen mature; pappus bristles tawny, 6.5–8 mm long.
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