General: Perennial herb from a simple or more or less branching stem-base and taproot; stems erect, simple or sometimes few branched, loosely long soft-hairy with more or less crinkled hairs, especially upwards, 3-35 cm tall.
Leaves: Basal leaves oblanceolate or occasionally spoon-shaped, 1.5-10 cm long, 2-10 mm wide, long-hairy to nearly glabrous or glabrous, entire; stem leaves few, much reduced, unstalked, narrowly lanceolate to linear or oblong.
Flowers: Heads with ray and disk flowers, solitary or sometimes several, the disks 12-30 mm wide; involucres 7-14 mm tall; involucral bracts more or less densely, long woolly-hairy with long, slender, multicellular hairs, crosswalls of the hairs clear or sometimes tinted purplish, lance-linear, tapering to a slender tip, usually dark, reddish-purple; ray flowers 100-200, white or pink to purplish, 3-6 mm long, 0.3-0.6 mm wide; disk flowers 1.5-2.2 mm long.
Fruits: Achenes 2-nerved, more or less hairy; pappus double, the inner of 20-30 bristles surpassing the disk flowers, the outer of a few small scales.
Wet to moist meadows in the alpine and subalpine zones; rare in NW BC, known recently only from Cold Fish Lake and the Kusawak Range; circumpolar, N to AK, YT and NT.