Perennials, 3.5-8 cm; taprooted, caudices simple or branched, relatively long, woody. Stems erect (scapiform), loosely white lanate-villous, sometimes sparsely minutely glandular. Leaves basal (persistent) and cauline (leaf bases broadened or not, not thickened and whitish-indurate); basal blades linear-oblanceolate to narrowly oblanceolate, 20-60 × 1.2-3 mm, cauline (on proximal ¹ / 2 of stems) similar to basal or slightly reduced, margins entire (apices acute), adaxial faces loosely strigose to villous (or hairs mixed, appressed and spreading), abaxial glabrate, eglandular. Heads 1. Involucres 6-8 × 12-17 mm. Phyllaries in 3 series, densely white-villous (hairs sometimes with blackish purple cross walls), densely minutely glandular. Ray florets 30-68; corollas purple to lavender, 8-11 mm, laminae coiling. Disc corollas 3.5-4.3 mm. Cypselae 2.3-2.8 mm, 2-nerved, faces strigose; pappi: outer of setae and scales, inner of 15-24 bristles. Flowering Jul-Aug. Rocky slopes and ridges, terraces, talus, dry meadows, usually calcareous; 2200-2500 m; Alta.; Mont. Erigeron lackschewitzii is closely similar to E. ochroleucus and perhaps derived from it.