Plants 50-100 cm; caudices branched. Stems 1-5+, ascending to erect, slender, essentially glabrous; axillary clusters of small leaves present in distal leaf axils. Leaves: basal often withering by flowering, tapering to petiolar bases, blades oblanceolate, largest blades 80-170 × 10-20 mm, margins entire or slightly toothed, ± strongly 3-nerved, apices acute; mid and distal cauline ascending to erect, blades linear-lanceolate, greatly reduced, becoming bractlike in arrays, less prominently or scarcely 3-nerved, glabrous. Heads 35-140, in paniculiform arrays, often about as broad as long, branches recurved-secund, often elongate. Peduncles 1-3(-5) mm; bracts linear-lanceolate, 1-3 mm, glabrous. Involucres campanulate, 3-5 mm. Phyllaries in 3 series, strongly unequal, broadly lanceolate, acute, glabrous. Ray florets 5-8; laminae 1-2 × 0.5-0.75 mm. Disc florets 3-9; corollas 3-4 mm, lobes 0.5-0.75 mm. Cypselae (obconic) 1.5-2 mm, glabrous; pappi 1.5-2 mm. 2n = 18.

Flowering Aug-Sep. Cedar barrens, limestone ledges and glades; 200-400 m; Ark., Mo., Tenn.

A. Cronquist (1980) suggested that Solidago gattingeri possibly occurs in Texas; no specimens were seen from that state.