Annuals 1.5-2.5 cm tall. Stems erect, lower half simple and leafless, upper half much branched with short internodes, apically with many leaves and flowering branches crowded into a capitulum, angled. Leaves overlapping, crowded; petiole tube 0.5-1.5 mm; leaf blade 2-6 × 2-4 mm, larger toward stem apex, margin distinctly cartilaginous, apex obtuse to rounded and cuspidate, midvein crested. Lower leaf blades broadly ovate; upper leaf blades broadly obovate to flabellate. Flowers many, subsessile. Calyx tubular, 6-7 mm, tube membranous; lobes suborbicular, 2-2.5 mm, herbaceous, margin distinctly cartilaginous, apex rounded and cuspidate, midvein crested. Corolla blue, with pale yellow-white base, broadly tubular, 8-10 mm; lobes ovate-triangular, 1-1.2 mm, margin entire, apex acute; plicae deeply 2cleft with both segments ovate, ca. 0.5 mm, margin entire, apex obtuse. Stamens inserted at middle of corolla tube, equal; filaments 1.5-2 mm; anthers narrowly ellipsoid, 0.8-1 mm. Ovary ellipsoid, 1.8-2 mm. Style 1.5-2 mm; stigma lobes semiorbicular. Fl. and fr. Jul-Oct.

Alpine meadows, scrub meadows; 3700-4300 m. SW Sichuan, SE Xizang [Nepal].