Hooker's description is: "The in its usual form is a rather slender, branched, perfectly smooth plant, with flexuose, leafy, grooved stems and shining foliage. Leaves all sessile, 3-5 inches long, linear-oblong, acuminate, irregularly toothed, below deeply two-lobed, and embracing the stem with two rounded auricles. Corymbs lax, branching, of rather small heads, on slender pedicels. Involucre 1/6 inch long, of slender, blunt [acutis in Latin diagnosis], smooth or sparingly pubescent scales, much shorter than the pappus, which is white, very soft, and of slender hairs. Ray florets few, with short ligulae. Achenia long and slender for the size of the capitulum, nearly as long as the involucral scales, grooved and pubescent.-The varieties ß [velleia] and γ [scabrosus] may belong to different species, but my specimens of them are very indifferent. Var. ß is a very thickly leathery-leaved plant, with stout stem and branches of the corymb, which bears very numerous broader heads, that have much shorter achenia. Var. γ again is a more rigid plant, covered on the stem and under surface of the leaf with hispid scattered hairs."

Branched herb with grooved stems up to 60 cm. tall, ± clad in white cobwebby tomentum. Lower lvs broad- to narrow-oblong to narrow-obovate in outline, ± coriac. to fleshy, becoming nearly glab. above, narrowed into 2-lobed amplexicaul base. Upper lvs diminishing gradually in size, uppermost merging into linear bracts of infl. Panicles corymbose, capitula campanulate; phyll. glab., oblong, abruptly acute. Ray-florets yellow, recurved; achenes ± hispid. Pappus-hairs very slender, minutely barbellate.

2n = 60

Ascending to erect perennial herb. Lvs glabrous or moderately to densely lanate especially on lower surface, apetiolate and often cuneate to amplexicaul base, elliptic, or elliptic-oblong to obovate, irregularly dentate to 1-2-serrate, lyrate-pinnatifid or 1-pinnatifid with oblong, few-toothed segments, or rarely crenately lobed, (2)-4-12-(20) × (1)-2-5 cm; teeth or segments (3)-7-20 or more on each side. Uppermost lvs smaller, narrower, often ± oblong or lanceolate, less divided and more conspicuously amplexicaul. Supplementary bracts 3-16-(20), 1.5-5 mm long. Involucral bracts 12-16-(19), glabrous, 2-5 mm long. Ray florets usually 7-13, very rarely as many as 22; ligules yellow, 3-8 mm long. Achenes with 1-3 rows of hairs in narrow grooves between broad ribs, not or scarcely narrowed to apex, 2-2.8 mm long.