Annual or biennial, 10-20 cm tall, increasing up to 40 cm in fruits, often branched from below, leafy, hairs with simple and furcate hairs. Basal leaves rosulate, oblong-elliptic or oblong-obovate, 1.5-4 cm long, (3-) 5-15 mm broad, acute, sessile, subdentate to entire; cauline leaves few (usually 2-5), lanceolate, 1-3-dentate, sessile, acute; all leaves hairy with simple and branched hairs. Racemes 20-30 (-40)-flowered, lax, up to 20 cm long in fruit. Flowers c. 3.5 mm across, yellow or yellowish, often drying whitish; pedicel 8-15 (-25) mm long in fruit, spreading. Sepals c. 2 mm long. Petals 3-4 (-4.5) mm long, 1 mm broad. Stamens c. 1.5 : 2 mm long. Fruits linear-oblong, (8-) 10-20 mm long, c. 2 mm broad, compressed, ± erect on spreading pedicels, subhairy or glabrous; stigma minute, sub-sessile; septum not veined; seeds 14-20 in each locule, c. 1 mm long, ovate, brown.

Fl. Per. May -July.

Type: W. Tibet, Balti, Das Kirin, Winterbottom 679 (K).

Distribution: C. Asia, Himalayas, Karakorum, Tibet, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Smaller forms of this species with almost aphyllous stems may sometimes be confused with the previous species, but longer fruits and pedicels with slightly larger flowers are distinctive.