Plants 10-20 cm (branches slender). Leaves moderately crowded, green; blades 1(-3)-nerved, linear, 30-50 × 0.5-2 mm, faces glabrous, minutely gland-dotted; distalmost about equaling arrays. Heads 6-20+ in lax (much-branched), racemiform to thyrsiform arrays. Involucres 12.5-15 mm. Phyllaries 9-13, chartaceous, apices erect (tan or greenish), attenuate. Florets 5-7; corollas yellow, 9-11 mm, tubes glabrous or proximally puberulent, throats gradually dilated, lobes 1.5-1.9 mm. 2n = 18.

Flowering late summer-fall. Sandy soils, rocky slopes and sagebrush flats; 1400-3200 m; Calif.

Variety vulcanica grows in the southern Sierra Nevada.