Herbs, spreading, matted, synoecious, 0.5-2 × 1-4 dm, thinly floccose. Stems: caudex spreading; aerial flowering stems erect, slender, solid, not fistulose, arising at nodes of caudex branches and at distal nodes of short, nonflowering aerial branches, 0.5-1.5(-1.8) dm, thinly floccose, with a whorl of 3 bracts ca. midlength, similar to leaf blades, 0.5-0.7 × 0.2-0.4 cm. Leaves in compact basal rosettes; petiole 0.2-0.6 cm, tomentose; blade oblong to elliptic, 0.5-1.5(-2) × 0.3-0.5(-0.8) cm, densely white-tomentose abaxially, thinly tomentose and greenish adaxially, margins entire, plane. Inflorescences capitate, 1-1.5 cm wide; branches thinly floccose; bracts 3, leaflike, narrowly lanceolate to narrowly elliptic, 0.5-0.7 × 0.2-0.5 cm. Involucres 1 per node, turbinate-campanulate to campanulate, 4-8 × 5-8 mm, tomentose; teeth 5-8, erect, 0.5-1.5 mm. Flowers 5-8 mm, including 1-1.5 mm stipelike base; perianth sulphur yellow, sparsely pubescent abaxially; tepals monomorphic, spatulate to oblong; stamens mostly included, 4-6 mm; filaments pilose proximally. Achenes light brown, 4-5 mm, glabrous except for sparsely pubescent beak.

Flowering Jun-Aug. Sandy to gravelly serpentine slopes and outcrops, manzanita communities, oak and montane conifer woodlands; 1100-1600 m; Calif.

Eriogonum libertini is encountered infrequently in the Dubakella and Tedoc mountains area of Tehama and Trinity counties in northwestern California. It is closely related to E. ternatum, found to the north.