Stems often dark purple, 30-200 cm. Leaves numerous (to 200 on tall plants), linear to narrowly linear (lengths more than 10 times widths), flat, slightly undulate, or twisted. Heads 20-100 in compact subumbelliform to paniculiform arrays.

Flowering Sep-Nov, rarely spring. Sandy soils, pine and oak woods, scrub, dunes, disturbed open soils, roadsides, cleared lots; 0-50 m; Fla.

Subspecies linearifolia is found in the Florida panhandle. These plants can be strikingly tall for the genus. Usually the array is compact; it may extend down the stem and be paniculiform in robust, late season plants. The basal rosettes can have a mixture of outer woolly, oblanceolate and inner glabrous, linear leaves. Small, depauperate plants of subsp. linearifolia could be confused with linear-leaved forms of Chrysopsis gossypina subsp. hyssopifolia, which differ in having ciliate leaf margins. Hybrids with C. lanuginosa occur in southern Bay County.