Small woolly annual herb forming dense mats 30-150 mm across, stems many from the crown, filiform, prostrate, simple below, branching above, very loosely white-woolly, leafy at the crown, then nude or nearly so, densely leafy at the branch tips. Leaves 4-20(-30) x 1-5 mm, diminishing upwards, those surrounding the heads always small (c. 4-7 x 1-2 mm), spathulate or oblong-spathulate, apex obtuse in small leaves, obtuse or subacute in larger, mucronate, loosely white woolly, partly glabrescent later. Heads heterogamous, campanulate, c. 3 x 3 mm, several in small glomerules terminating the branchlets, each head buried in white wool and closely surrounded by leaves, the tips of which, green or tinged purplish and glabrous or nearly so, emerge from the wool, the glomerules in turn sometimes subtended by long narrow leaves. Involucral bracts in 3 series, subequal, backs loosely woolly, tips long-acuminate, glabrous, squarrose, opaque, straw-coloured or whitish. Receptacle shortly honeycombed. Flowers c. 75-125, 70-120 ('female'), 4-11 ('bisexual'), yellow, sometimes tipped pink. Achenes 0.5 mm long, with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles evenly barbed with long more or less patent cilia, tending to intermingle. Flowering recorded in most months; the plants probably appear after rain.
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