Plants 5-60 cm. Stems erect, tan to brown, glabrous or villous. Leaves: basal withering by flowering; cauline margins entire, faces gland-dotted (in pits) and sometimes stipitate-glandular, abaxial glabrous or villous to tomentose. Heads borne singly or in corymbiform arrays, usually at ends of branchlets. Involucres narrowly obconic, 5-6 mm. Phyllaries usually purple-tipped, faces glabrous, stipitate-glandular and gland-dotted; inner scarious. Disc florets 3-10; corollas usually white, sometimes pale lavender (color more intense in tubes); style-branch appendages usually lanceolate, sometimes truncate-penicillate, 0.4-1 mm. Pappi tan, equaling or longer than cypselae. 2n = 10, 12.

Flowering Jul-Oct. Open fields, roadsides, borders of woodlands, sometimes on serpentinite soils; 200-1100 m; Calif.

Lessingia nemaclada is widespread in central and northern California (except near the coast) and is morphologically variable.