Plants herbs, spreading, matted, 0.5–2 dm tall, 1–5 dm across, glabrate or glabrous; stems with caudex spreading, the aerial flowering stems erect, slender, solid, not fistulose, arising at nodes of caudex branches and at distal nodes of short, non-flowering aerial branches, 0.5–1.5 (2) dm long, usually glabrous, with a whorl of 2–4 foliaceous bracts about midlength, similar to leaf blade, 0.3–0.5 cm long, 0.1–0.2 cm wide; leaves in dense compact basal rosettes, the petioles 0.2–0.6 cm long, glabrate or glabrous, the blades spatulate to round, (0.3) 0.5–0.8 cm long, (0.2) 0.3–0.5 (0.7) cm wide, densely white to thinly tomentose abaxially, sparsely floccose to glabrate and green or olive green adaxially, rarely glabrous on both surfaces, the margins entire, plane; inflorescences capitate, rarely umbellate, 0.8–1.5 cm wide or 1–2 cm long, 1–3 cm wide, the branches usually glabrate, the bracts absent immediately below involucre; involucres 1 per node, turbinate-campanulate to campanulate, (3) 3.5–4 mm long, 4–6 mm wide, arachnoid-tomentose, the teeth 6–10, lobelike, reflexed, (2) 2.5–3.5 mm long; flowers (4) 4.5–6 mm long, including a 0.6–1 mm long stipelike base, the perianth sulphur yellow, glabrous, the tepals monomorphic, oblong, the stamens exserted, 3.5–5 mm long, the filaments pilose proximally; achenes light brown, 4.5–5 mm long, glabrous.

Flowering Jul-Sep. Gravelly serpentine slopes and outcrops, manzanita communities, montane conifer woodlands; 1600–2800 m; ridge system extending from the Scott Mountain area to the Mt. Eddy region of Siskiyou and Trinity cos., California.