Perennial spiny, small shrub up to 50 cm tall. Branches spiny, naked, intricate. Leaves mostly basal on young plants, or on new shoot from old branches, caducous, linear, linear-lobed, the lobes glabrous, sinuately lobed, linear-lanceolate to spathulate. Capitula borne on the tips of new branches, short-peduncled, up to 10-flowered. Inner involucral bracts 5, up to 7 mm long. Ligules bright yellow, up to 6 mm long above the corolla tube.