It is a low, neatly mounded plant producing spreading stems which are hairless to densely woolly in texture.

[2] It has a toothed edge and a velvety surface coated in woolly fibres and shiny hairs; it is brownish to grayish or pale green in color.

The knobby inflorescence is 6 millimetres (1⁄4 in) wide[2] and lined with woolly gray-green phyllaries with dull points that curve outward.

[2] The fruit is an achene tipped with a large pappus of over 100 long, fine bristles.

It is native to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, where it grows in desert scrub.