Biennials (rarely perennials), 30-100(-200) cm; taprooted (rarely perennating by production of basal rosettes). Stems erect (often reddish purple), usually simple, glabrous. Leaves: basal blades oblanceolate to linear, 15-70 × 1-7 mm, faces glabrous or densely woolly; proximal cauline often becoming black and twisted; cauline blades linear or linear-lanceolate to oblong, flat, slightly undulate, or twisted, bases tapering to rounded, margins entire, eciliate, occasionally undulate, apices acute, faces glabrous. Heads (4-)20-100 in subumbelliform to compact, paniculiform or loosely open corymbiform arrays. Peduncles 2-8 cm, glabrous; bracteoles 1-3, linear, glabrous. Involucres campanulate, 6-10(-12) mm. Phyllaries in 4-5 series, erect, linear-lanceolate, unequal, 0.6-1.1 mm wide, apices, acute-appressed, acuminate to long-acuminate, faces glabrous, bases of outer sparsely stipitate-glandular. Ray florets 10-30; laminae 9-12 mm. Disc florets 35-60; corollas 5-6 mm, lobes 0.5-1 mm. Cypselae (stramineous) 2-2.5 mm, 2-6-ridged (ridges golden yellow to red-brown, translucent, clavate), weakly ribbed, faces sparsely strigose to sometimes only proximally so; pappi in 3 series, outer of linear to narrowly triangular scales 0.5-1 mm, inner of 20-35 bristles 4-6 mm, inner moderately clavate. 2n = 10.

Chrysopsis linearifolia is disjunct between the central and western panhandle and the central peninsula.