Herbs perennial, 10-30 cm tall. Rhizomes creeping. Stems single or several, cespitose, erect, or ascending, usually branched, densely strigose or white villous. Leaves sessile or nearly so, lanceolate or oblanceolate to oblong or linear to linear-lanceolate, 1-5 cm × 6-10 mm, densely strigose or villous, base cuneate to rounded, apex acuminate to obtuse. Cymes terminal, scorpioid, 1.5-4 cm wide. Flowers pedicellate. Calyx lobes lanceolate, 3-4 mm, densely strigose. Corolla yellowish white, campanulate, 1-1.3 cm; tube longer than lobes, densely strigose outside; lobes ovate to oblong, recurved. Filaments ca. 0.5 mm, inserted at middle of corolla tube; anthers oblong, 2.5-3 mm, apex mucronate. Ovary slightly 4-cleft, 0.7-0.9 mm, glabrous. Style ca. 0.5 mm, thin; stigma slightly 2-cleft, 0.7-0.8 mm. Fruit elliptic to ovoid, 7-9 mm in diam., scabrous, densely strigose, apex concave; endocarp longitudinally ribbed, divided at maturity into 2 2-seeded pyrenes. Fl. May, fr. Jul. 2n = 26.

Arid slopes, sandy areas; 0-1900 m. Gansu, Hebei, Heilong-jiang, Henan, Gansu, Liaoning, Nei Mongol, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi [Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Mongolia, Russia; SW Asia, SE Europe]