Plants 15-40 cm; proximal indument grayish, arachnoid, early glabrescent. Stems mostly 1-5, ascending to erect; branches mainly proximal. Leaves basal (withering) and cauline, 1-8 cm; largest blades ± plane, scarcely succulent, usually 1-pinnately lobed; lobes 2-7 pairs, ± remote, ± plane or terete. Heads mostly 1-3 per stem. Peduncles 5-20 cm. Involucres ± hemispheric to broadly cylindric. Phyllaries: longest 7-9 × 2-3 mm; outer glabrescent in fruit. Florets: inner corollas 5-8 mm. Cypselae 5-8.5 mm; pappi of 4(-5) scales in 1 series, longest scales mostly 5-8 mm, lengths ± 0.9(-1) times corollas.

Flowering Mar-Jun. Dry, often sandy slopes, openings in chaparral, woodlands; 300-1500 m; Calif.

Variety megacephala is known mainly from the southern Sierra Nevada foothills and adjacent San Joaquin Valley and Transverse Ranges; it intergrades extensively with vars. lanosa and glabriuscula. A specimen cited by P. Stockwell (1940) from Bingen, Klickitat County, Washington (Suksdorf, May 1907) was not checked; it is either misidentified or from an introduction that did not persist.