A perennial herb with tufted leaves in loose open mats. 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, 0.5-2.0 cm apart. Short shoots growing upwards from the rhizome, with 3-8 tufted leaves at the apex. Roots slender and weak, up to 0.5 mm diam. Leaves 1-pinnatifid, 1-4 × 0.3-0.6 cm; blade 1-4 cm, oblong to elliptic, thick, subfleshy, and stiff, yellow-green, sts with brown pigment on proximal lobes, with a moderate to dense cover of long woolly hairs, midrib prominently raised along the ventral surface; pinnae 12-20 pairs, close-set and us. overlapping, cut to rhachis, broadly elliptic; teeth on most pinnae, up to 6 per pinna, on distal margins, cut ca. 1/3 across pinna, close-set, narrowly triangular, obtuse. Peduncle us. borne on short shoots, ca. equal to leaves, 1-4 cm, nude or with 1 simple bract, villous. Dioecious. Pistillate heads 3-5 mm diam., up to 10 mm in fruit; surface convex; involucre urceolate; phyllaries 20-40 in 3 or more unequal rows, broadly elliptic, green, ± villous, with a wide brown-tipped scarious margin; inner phyllaries grow after anthesis to enclose developing fruit; at maturity phyllaries bend outwards to partly expose fruit; florets 25-120, ca. 2.0 mm long, curved, yellow-green; corolla slightly longer than wide, with unequal teeth. Staminate heads 4—6 mm diam.; involucre hemispherical; phyllaries 8-15 in 1-2 subequal rows, not growing after anthesis; florets slightly more numerous. Achenes up to 1.6 × 0.8 mm, slightly compressed, in section almost round or irregularly angled, with a pale unwrinkled papery surface turning brown and smooth. Probably flowers in spring.

Rhizomata subterranea, pallida, rigidula. Folia imbricata, viva ad apices caulium determinatorum, rigida, subcarnosa, choratica pilis partim obscurata; pinnae imbricatae; dentes usque ad 6 oblongi ad triangulares, obtusi. Dioica.