Stems glabrous or villous. Abaxial leaf faces glabrous or villous. Involucres obconic to cylindric, 4-7 mm. Phyllaries glabrous or villous. Disc florets 17-30; style-branch appendages lanceolate, 0.3-1.3 mm. 2n = 10.

Flowering May-Oct. Desert areas, chaparral, pine forests, usually sandy soils; 500-2400 m; Ariz., Calif., Nev.; Mexico (Baja California).

As here circumscribed, var. glandulifera includes plants that lack a colored band in corolla tubes and have lanceolate style-branch appendages (others have treated those plants as Lessingia lemmonii var. lemmonii). Also included are plants that sometimes form tumbleweeds and have puberulent phyllaries and overlapping cauline leaves that clasp the bases of involucres (others have treated those as L. lemmonii var. ramulosissima). In California, var. glandulifera is known from the Transverse Range, the Peninsular Range, and the Mojave Desert (north to Mono County).

Plant: Annual; herbage grayish tomentose, sometimes becoming glabrous with age; stems decumbent or erect, 0.3-4 dm

Leaves: basal deciduous, < 6 cm, petioled, oblanceolate or long-tapered obovate, entire to pinnately lobed; cauline < 2 cm, awl-shaped or linear to obovate, entire or tip with few teeth, sessile, reduced upward

INFLORESCENCE: primary inflorescence a head, each resembling a flower; heads discoid, solitary, terminal; involucres 4-6 mm, narrowly obconic to bell-shaped; phyllaries oblong, obtuse or acute, puberulent or tomentose, margins with large sessile glands; receptacle concave, naked, shallowly pitted

Flowers: Ray flowers 0; Disk flowers 10-25; corollas funnel-shaped to tubular, marginal corollas funnel-shaped in small heads, yellow, with or without white band in throat; style branches 1-2 mm, appendages 0.7-1.3 mm, with long, abrupt point

Fruit: 1.5-3.5 mm, obconic, mottled purple-brown; hairs dense, appressed, silky; pappus bristles many, free to base, white or tannish white

Misc: Sandy soils; 200-1850 m.