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Variable, stock woody, with 1-several leaf rosettes, flowering stems decumbent or erect, up to 450 mm long, simple or forking above into a few-to many-headed, very open corymb, glandular-pubescent or woolly, closely leafy. Leaves grey-woolly or cobwebby to glandular-pubescent; radical leaves prostrate, up to 140 mm long; cauline leaves oblong to lanceolate, becoming bracteate. Capitula heterogamous, campanulate, ± 25-35 mm in diam.; involucral bracts in 9-11 series, graded, glossy, white to crimson. Flowers 165-520, yellow often tipped red. Flowering time mainly Jan.-Apr. Pappus of several bristles, bases nude, free. Cypselae 0.75 mm long, barrel-shaped, hairy.
The heads are always ±15-20 mm long, but there is much variation in stature, leaf size and indumentum, number of heads on the flowering stem, and colour of the involucral bracts. Plants with 1-headed stems are common above ±1 200 m, those with many-headed stems from sea-level to ±1 800 m, but there are many exceptions. Plants with pure white bracts have been recorded only below ±600 m and grow mixed with plants with particoloured bracts.
Decumbent or erect perennial herb, 40-450 mm tall. Radical leaves suborbicular to elliptic-oblong, 20-40 (-140) x 15-25(-40) mm, mostly loosely grey-woolly or cobwebby; cauline leaves oblong to lanceolate, smaller. Heads campanulate, 15-20 mm long. Flowers yellow often tipped red; involucral bracts white tipped rose, crimson or scarlet or entirely rose or crimson.
