Perennial herb arising from a thick taproot with numerous, short (1-3 cm), ascending-erect caudex branches, the upper portion of these with persistent old leaf bases; stems erect, 5-8 cm tall, unbranched, green, sparsely short-strigose with white, stiff, closely appressed trichomes, evenly distributed, even in length, 0.2-0.3 mm long; leaves green, similar in vestiture to the stems, arising in dense basal clusters from the caudex apices, erect to ascending, linear, 9-34 mm long, 0.5-0.8 mm wide, thickened, slightly flaring at the very base; stem leaves strictly ascending and continuing relatively unreduced in size half way to nearly all the way up the stems; heads solitary, terminal, involucre cup-shaped, 10-14 mm wide (pressed); phyllaries in 2-3 subequal series, 5-7 mm long, narrowly lanceolate with attenuate-filiform apices, minutely but prominently granular-glandular, the outer also sparsely pilose with a few crisped-spreading hairs arising centrally; ray florets 21-33, the corollas 7-10 mm long, 1.0-2.4 mm wide, white, drying pinkish, distinctly coiling from the apices with maturity; disk corollas 3.6-4.2 mm long, narrowly funnelform, glabrate; style branches 0.5-0.6 mm long, the collecting appendages deltate to shallowly triangular, 0.1-0.2 mm long; achenes 2(-3) nerved, narrowly oblong, 2.8-3.1 mm long, the faces glabrous, the margins sparsely ciliate; pappus of 20-27 barbellate bristles. Flowers primarily in May and June.