Herbs, spreading, matted, synoecious, 0.5-4 × (1.5-)2-8(-12), thinly tomen-tose to floccose or glabrate. Stems: caudex spreading; aerial flowering stems erect, slender, solid, not fistulose, arising at nodes of caudex branches and at distal nodes of short, non-flowering aerial branches, 0.4-4 dm, thinly tomentose to floccose or glabrate. Leaves in rather compact basal rosettes; petiole 0.1-1.5 cm, tomentose; blade elliptic, 0.7-2(-2.2) × 0.4-1(-1.2) cm, or ovate, 0.8-1.4(-2.5) × 0.5-1.2(-2) cm, densely white- or rufous-tomentose abaxially, thinly tomentose, sparsely floccose, or glabrous and greenish adaxially, margins slightly wavy. Inflorescences compound-umbellate, 1-3(-6) × 1-5 cm, thinly tomentose to glabrate; bracts: proximal 3-8, lanceolate to narrowly elliptic, 0.5-2 × 0.25-1 cm, distal 3, semileaflike, midway along branch, linear to narrowly lanceolate, 0.7-1 × 0.1-0.25 cm, or ± scalelike below involucre, 1-5 mm. Involucres 1 per node, turbinate to turbinate-campanulate, 3.5-8 × 2.5-4 mm, villous; teeth 5-8, erect, 0.5-2 mm. Flowers 5-7 mm at anthesis, 6.5-9 mm in fruit, including 0.5-0.8 mm stipelike base, with perianth cream or rarely yellow, suffused with blush of pinkish red to maroon, glabrous, or flowers 4-6 mm, including 1-1.3 mm stipelike base, with perianth pale yellow or rarely yellow, not suffused with blush of color glabrous; tepals slightly dimorphic or monomorphic, broadly ovate or obovate; stamens exserted, 3-5 mm; filaments pilose proximally. Achenes light brown, (5-)5.5-8 mm or 3-3.5 mm, glabrous except for sparsely pubescent beak.

Varieties 2 (2 in the flora): California.