It has a basal rosette of entire, slightly leathery leaves, and stems of 5–25 cm high, topped by bowl-shaped flower heads with many slender florets with long pappus and purplish corollas.

It grows high in the mountains of China (Sichuan), Tibet, India (Sikkim), and Bhutan, and flowers in July and August.

Leaves become smaller and less leathery or fleshy further up, with the highest bract-like, up to 1+1⁄2 cm, almost vertically oriented and enveloping the base of the flower heads.

[3] The species was initially described in 1910 as Saussurea tanguensis by James Ramsay Drummond, a British civil servant and amateur botanist living in India.

However, William Wright Smith and John Kunkel Small in 1917 considered it too different from other Saussurea species and erected the new genus Cavea for it.

[4] Both also have basal leaf rosettes, stretched leaves, with few spaced teeth on the margin, and both lack spines and latex.

[citation needed] Gymnarrhena micrantha is now considered the sister taxon of Cavea tanguensis, who together constitute the tribe Gymnarrheneae and the subfamily Gymnarrhenoideae.

[4][5] Based on recent genetic analysis, it is now generally accepted that the Pertyoideae subfamily is sister to a clade that has as its basal member the Gymnarrhenoideae, and further consists of the Asteroideae, Corymbioideae and Cichorioideae.

[2] Cavea grows on gravelly substrate near glaciers and streams at altitudes between 4000 and 5100 m.[2] Leaves are used on wounds, and to suppress fever.