Annual or biennial. Stems erect or ascending, branching, ribbed to grooved, 15-75-(100) cm tall; hairs both white, slender, crinkly, subappressed, and red-based, stout, straight, spreading. Rosette and lower stem lvs thick, petiolate, oblong to oblanceolate, usually deeply runcinately 1-2-pinnatifid, rarely simple and shallowly pinnatifid or toothed, (7)-10-20-(35) × (2)-4-8-(12) cm; hairs pale, 0.2-0.5 mm long, on both surfaces and margins; lobes slightly recurved, toothed or divided. Stem lvs similar, deeply pinnatisect to not lobed, toothed, sessile, subauriculate or lobed at base. Capitula campanulate; buds erect. Involucral bracts with pale subappressed cobwebby hairs and often dark, spreading glandular hairs on outer surface, and fine appressed straight hairs on inner surface; outer bracts 6-12, lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate, ?-1/2 length of inner bracts; inner bracts lanceolate, not keeled, (6)-9-12 mm long, with pale to scarious glabrous margins. Receptacle areoles with raised ciliate margins. Corolla yellow, sometimes with red stripe on outer face of ligule. Achenes brown, 10-ribbed, fusiform, scabrid, all long-beaked, 6-9 mm long. Pappus bristles in 1-(2) rows, fine, white.