Herbs, perennial. Rhizome simple, shortened, with solitary stem or multicipital, to 10 cm, densely covered with brown relicts of leaf sheaths and beset with thinly filiform radicals, usually without stolons, forming small lax fasciculate clusters of a few stems and sterile bundles of leaves. Stems (5-)15-30(-50) cm tall, erect or ascending, herbaceous, firm sometimes subflexuous ash-colored to gray arachnoid tomentose or arachnoid, violet flocculent (as well as on leaves), usually glabrescent, at least in lower half up to anthesis, equally leafy, with 5-20 leaves. Leaves oblong, linear, linear-spatulate, or linear-lanceolate; cauline leaves 2.5-4.5 cm × 2-5 mm, usually corrugated and dropping at anthesis; radical rosette leaves more often narrowly lanceolate, narrowed into a long petiole, ca. 15 cm × 9 mm, both surfaces equally or subequally ash-colored to gray arachnoid tomentose. Synflorescence usually simple, loose, but sometimes corymbiform, to 7 cm in diam., of 3-7 separate groups of capitula. Capitula 7-12(-20), heterogamous or unisexual, dioecious, closely aggregated, 4-6 mm in diam.; bracteal leaves linear or linear-lanceolate, of very unequal lengths, forming irregular multiradiate star of 4-5 cm in diam., yellowish or almost white, to pallid yellow (in dried plants), densely tomentose, margin convolute, apex acuminate. Phyllaries ca. 4 mm, apex almost transparent to almost black, somewhat prominently tomentose. Fl. May-Sep, fr. Jun-Sep.
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