A small perennial herb with tufts of leaves in grassland turfs. Rhizomes us. well-buried, pale, wiry, and glabrous; branches uncommon, us. single at flowering nodes; leaves spirally-arranged, reduced scales lacking a blade and petiole, 0.5-1.5 cm apart. Short shoots, growing upwards from the rhizome, with 3-6 tufted leaves at the apex. Roots slender and weak, up to 0.4 mm diam. Leaves 1-pinnatifid, 0.7- 2.0 × 0.2-0.6 cm; blade 0.6-2.0 cm, elliptic or obovate, submembranous, green, or glaucous, older leaves often diffusely covered with brown pigment, moderately to densely silver-hairy, midrib raised along most of vertical surface but sts obscured by hairs; pinnae 8-20 pairs, closeset and us. overlapping, cut to rhachis, broadly obovate; teeth on all or most pinnae, up to 6 per pinna, on distal margins, cut ca. ½ across pinna, close-set, oblong, obtuse, sts obscured by hairs. Peduncles us. borne on short shoots, ca. equal to leaves, 1-3 cm, nude or with 1 simple bract, villous. Dioecious. Pistillate heads 2-4 mm, up to 8 mm in fruit; surface convex; involucre urceolate; phyllaries 20-40 in 3 or more unequal rows, broadly elliptic, green, villous, with wide often brown-tipped scarious margin; inner phyllaries grow after anthesis to enclose subglobose fruiting head; florets 30-95, ca. 2.0 mm long, curved, yellow-green, corolla slightly longer than wide, with unequal teeth. Staminate heads 3-5 mm diam.; involucre hemispherical; phyllaries 8-15 in 1-2 subequal rows, not growing after anthesis; florets slightly more numerous. Achenes up to 1.4 × 0.8 mm, slightly compressed, in section almost round, with a pale unwrinkled papery surface turning brown and smooth. Flowers in spring.

Rhizomata subterranea, pallida, rigidula. Folia imbricata, viva ad apices caulium determinatorum, flexibilia, viridia vel glauca, folia matura plerumque rubiginoso pigmento ubique suffusa; pinnae ± imbricatae; dentes usque ad 6 oblongi, obtusi, conferti, plerumque pilis obscurati. Dioica.