It is native to the western United States from Montana and Idaho to southern California and Arizona, where it grows in many types of mostly dry habitat from deserts to mountains.

It is a spindly subshrub producing several slender stems up to 40 or 50 centimeters tall from a woody caudex.

The stems divide many times into short, rigid branches which narrow to sharp thorn-tips.

The leaves are small and linear on the lower stem, and reduced to scale-like growths on the upper branches.

The fruit is an achene tipped with a cluster of pappus bristles which are not plumelike as are those of the Stephanomeria species with which this plant was once classified.