A perennial herbaceous plant 10-30 cm tall with a thin rhizome, from which numerous shortened, recumbent vegetative shoots depart, bearing regular leaves collected in rosettes and several straight unbranched flowering felt-pubescent stems. The leaves are whole-edged, glabrous from above, green or silvery on both sides, felt-pubescent, basal-lobed (3-4 cm in length and 0.3-1 cm wide), blunt or pointed, tapering into a long petiole. The stem leaves are linear or linear-lanceolate, whitish, sessile, pressed against the stem. The flowers are small in baskets, collected in corymbose inflorescences; the apical basket is 5-6 mm in diameter. The plant is dioecious; the baskets with female flowers are oblong, usually pink. Men's baskets are spherical, white in color. At the base of the baskets are tiled wrapper leaves, they are fluffy from below, dry from above. The flower is younger, glabrous, convex, male flowers with a tubular or tubular-leucoid perianth, five stamens, often with a pistil, but infertile. Female flowers are broadly tubular with a pistil, a column and a two-part stigma, the ovary is lower. The fruits are cylindrical, oblong achenes (up to 1 mm long) with a tuft of jagged hairs. It blooms from mid-May to the end of July; the fruits ripen in June-August. Reproduction by seed and vegetative means. It grows in pine forests, among heather, as well as in dry meadows and clearings. A light-loving plant that prefers sandy soils.