Shrub or shrubby herb 15–120 cm high, its outline often rounded; stems armed with reddish spines to 1.5 cm long or unarmed, distally densely branching, thin-tomentose and densely leafy.. Leaves grey-green, spreading, erect and overlapping, or clustered in tight little rosettes, sessile, linear or narrowly lanceolate, 3–10 mm long, 1–2 mm wide, base slightly clasping, margins revolute, apex obtuse, densely tomentose on both surfaces.. Capitula 10–18 mm long, homogamous, solitary and terminal, but seeming to form a corymb through the dense branching; stalks of individual capitula very short; phyllaries shiny white or cream, multiseriate, spreading, lanceolate or elliptic, 4–14 mm long, 1.5–2.5 mm wide, subacute, proximally with short black hairs; receptacle honeycombed.. Florets yellow, all hermaphrodite, 30–130, tube cylindrical or narrowly infundibuliform, 2–3 mm long, lobes 0.2–0.5 mm long with short black hairs, anthers ± 2 mm long, style 2.5–3.5 mm long.. Achenes cylindrical, 0.6–0.8 mm long, glabrous or pilose; pappus white, 3–4 mm long.
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