Plants biennial but usually per-ennial; taproot stout. Stems erect to ascending, much-branched throughout, 10-30 cm, glabrous. Leaves: stipules lanceolate, 2-5 mm, apex acuminate to long-acuminate, entire; blade linear, 7-15(-19) × 0.4-0.8(-1) mm, leathery, apex subobtuse or minutely cuspidate, glabrous. Cymes terminating branchlets, 10-40+-flowered, repeatedly forked and diffuse, clusters 1-3 cm wide. Flowers 5-merous, ± short-campanulate, with enlarged hypanthium and calyx constricted proximally, 2.3-3.2 mm, hirtellous, glabrous distally; sepals red-brown, veins absent to obscure, narrowly oblong, 1.8-2.3 mm, leathery to rigid, margins translucent, 0.05-0.1 mm wide, scarious, apex terminated by awn, hood conspicuously rounded, awn divergently spreading, 1-1.5(-2) mm, ± broadly conic in proximal 1/ 3 with yellowish, glabrous spine; staminodes filiform, 0.7-0.9 mm; style 1, cleft in distal 1/5, 0.6-1.3 mm. Utricles ovoid, 1.2-1.5 mm, minutely papillose distally.

Flowering summer-fall. Mountain tops, rocky slopes and ledges, gravel beds of mountain streams; ca 1200 m; Tex.; Mexico (Coahuila).