The plant is 30–90 centimetres (12–35 in) high and wide, which grows as a perennial herbaceous or slightly woody plant on the ground. The stems stand upright. The leaves are broad ovate in outline and wedge-shaped in the petiole, the length of the leaves is more than 6 inches. The lower leaves are plumed, further up the stems they are increasingly entire. Deciduous leaves appear in the spring. They are alternate, lobed pinnatifid and toothed. They are up to 12 cm long, fleshy and covered with gray hairs. They exhale a strong smell when they are wrinkled. The plant's texture is thick and leathery. The many branches, which are silky and covered with a short down, form a dense tuft. The typical flower heads are radiated, that is to say formed of peripheral florets, female, zygomorphous, with ligules and central florets actinomorphous, tubulated, bisexual. The external bracts are herbaceous, with a narrow scariety margin. In complex total inflorescences are some to many cup-shaped partial inflorescences together. The tongue flowers can have in the many varieties of colors of green, white, or yellow, pink to purple. There are varieties with simple flowers that look like daisies and varieties with double flowers, looking like pompoms more or less big. The plant starts to bloom when the length of the day is less than 14 hours. To note, during the millennia and a half of cultivation, tens of thousands of different cultivars have been obtained, with flower heads of very different shapes, sizes and colors. It is mainly by looking at the leaves that one can know that it is a chrysanthemum.
