Plants 5-60 cm. Stems erect, tan, villous to woolly. Leaves: basal withering by flowering; cauline margins entire, faces gland-dotted (in pits), rarely also stipitate-glandular (glands sometimesobscured by tomentum), abaxial usually woolly, sometimes villous. Heads borne singly or in corymbiform arrays, usually in axils of leaves. Involucres narrowly obconic, 5-7 mm. Phyllaries green or purple-tipped, faces villous to woolly, gland-dotted or not; inner scarious. Disc florets 3-6; corollas usually white, sometimes pale lavender (color more intense in tubes); style-branch appendages truncate-penicillate or lanceolate, 0.3-0.9 mm. Pappi white or tan, longer than cypselae. 2n = 10.

Flowering Jun-Oct. Dry plains, and grassy openings of woodlands, sometimes volcanic soils; 50-500 m; Calif.

Lessingia virgata is known from the foothills of the Cascade Range, foothills of the northern and central Sierra Nevada, and the northeastern Great Valley.