Perennial herb, much branched from a thick (up to 10 mm diam.) woody, creeping underground stock, aerial flowering branches up to ±150 mm long, several radiating from each crown, mostly simple, decumbent-ascending, grey-woolly, leafy. Radical leaves rosetted, up to 30 x 18 mm, broadly elliptic to subrotund, very obtuse, densely greyish-white woolly; cauline leaves similar but smaller and tending towards oblong-spathulate, half-clasping. Heads homogamous, campanulate, 5-8 x 4-5 mm, rarely solitary, usually 2-7 in terminal clusters surrounded by leaves. Involucral bracts in ±5 series, subequal, loosely imbricate, outer series pale brown, loosely webbed together with wool, inner slightly exceeding flowers, sometimes purplish above the stereome, tips opaque white, very obtuse, crisped, radiating. Receptacle nearly smooth. Flowers 24-54. Achenes not seen, ovaries with myxogenic duplex hairs. Pappus bristles many, in more than one series, about equalling the corolla, tips scabrid, scabridulous below, fused at base in bundles.
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Tufted, grey-woolly subshrub to 15 cm with decumbent stems from a woody rootstock. Leaves obovate, densely woolly, the lower in basal rosettes. Flower heads discoid, few in terminal clusters enclosed by leafy bracts, campanulate, white, 5-8 x 4-5 mm, inner bracts spreading above, florets 20-50, ovary papillate-hairy.
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