Erect shrub to 80 cm high. Leaves subsessile, ovate, elliptic or narrowly elliptic, 2–8.5 (–10) cm long, 0.5–5 cm wide, denticulate or entire, acute or obtuse, pale-green, ±glabrous, glaucous. Capitula solitary, 0.8–1.2 (–1.5) cm long, 1.2–1.5 cm diam.; peduncles bracteate or ebracteate, (1–) 1.5–3 (–4) cm long; involucral bracts unequal; outermost bracts linear-lanceolate, c. 3 mm long; median and inner bracts broadly lanceolate to ovate, 4.5–6.5 mm long, entire or sometimes 1-or 2-toothed, acute to acuminate, occasionally cuspidate; paleae c. 2.5 mm long. Florets 15–75, purple-pink; corolla tube 3.5–6 mm long; lobes 2.5–3 mm long; anthers 2.5–3.9 mm long, purplish. Achenes cylindrical to fusiform, 3.5–5 mm long, apically truncate with persistent stylar base, hairy to glabrous. Pappus absent or bristles 1–10, to 1 mm long when present.
Grows in seasonally wet woodlands or open woodlands in sandy alluvial or grey sandy soil, along roadsides in gravelly lateritic soil, and in sandstone country beside creeks