Stems green or tan. Leaf margins entire or dentate to pinnately lobed (segments not cuspidate). 2n = 10.

Flowering May-Oct. Coastal scrub, woodlands, pine forests, desert scrub, sometimes sandy soils; 100-1700 m; Calif.

As here circumscribed, var. tenuipes includes plants that have a colored band in corolla tubes and truncate-penicillate style-branch appendages. Others have treated those plants as Lessingia glandulifera var. glandulifera. Herein, the latter name is applied elsewhere in the genus (plants that lack a colored band in corolla tubes and have lanceolate style-branch appendages). Variety tenuipes is known from the San Francisco Bay area, Great Central Valley, Sierra Nevada foothills, South Coast Range, and southwestern California.