Plants 7-30 cm (often densely leafy); usually glabrate or puberulent, sometimes hirtellous. Leaves: petioles 5-8(-12) mm; blades reniform to cordate, 8-20(-33) × 8-20(-33) mm, margins subentire, dentate-toothed, or shallow-lobed. Heads in corymbiform arrays, 7-8(-9) × 2-3 mm. Peduncles 2-10(-15) mm. Involucres cylindric to narrowly campanulate. Phyllaries 5-6, linear-lanceolate, 5-6(-9) × (1-)1.3-1.7 mm. Disc florets 5-6(-8); corollas yellow, tubes 1-1.3 mm, throats tubular, 2-2.3(-2.8) mm, lobes 0.5-1 mm. Cypselae 1.9-2(-2.9) mm; pappi of 25-30 bristles 0.6-2.5(-3.5) mm. 2n = 34.

Flowering spring-fall. Crevices of limestone (rarely igneous) rock in high canyons, bluffs, and caprock; 1200-2500 m; N.Mex., Tex.

Perityle quinqueflora grows in mountains of west-central trans-Pecos Texas and adjacent New Mexico. Possibly P. quinqueflora and the similar P. rupestris var. rupestris have both evolved from a widespread common ancestor resembling P. cernua.