Each ray floret is 1–2½ cm long, 2–6 mm wide, entire or sometimes with mostly one to three teeth at the tip and mostly four or five veins, hairless or with scattered multicellular hairs on the lower surface. In the centre of the flowerhead are mostly between twenty and forty (sometimes as few as eleven) yellow and urn-shaped disk florets, of 3½–7 mm long, which divide into five triangular lobes, ⅓ of the length of the floret, that spread or bend down, and do not have hair. The one-seeded indehiscent fruits are not embedded in the common base of the florets receptacle, is inverted cone-shaped or oblong, has three or four ribs, is at least 3 mm long, and half as wide, with a smooth surface or with tiny wrinkles and hearless. At the tip is one row of scales (the pappus) of ½–1 mm long, that are free in the outer florets, but merged at their foot in disc florets. These scales are split into twelve to fifteen standing, awl-shaped lobes, with a long, narrow tip, divided in side-lobes and without hair. The upper leaf surface of plants of "Haplocarpha rueppellii" growing on Mount Elgon are consistently densely covered in multicellular hairs. Elsewhere, hairiness varies between specimens in the same population. Scholars therefore are reluctant to assign the form from Mount Elgon to a variety different from the typical form. In 1848 Carl Heinrich 'Bipontinus' Schultz described "Schnittspahnia rueppellii", which he assigned to the Annonaceae, based on a specimen that was collected by Eduard Rüppell and Georg Wilhelm Schimper, from high elevations in the Semien Mountains in Ethiopia, and now reside in the Kew herbarium. Georg Carl Wilhelm Vatke realised this plant belonged to the Asteraceae, and renamed it to "Landtia rueppellii" in 1875. Karl August Otto Hoffmann thought the species should be assigned to the genus "Arctotis", creating the new combination "A. rueppellii" in 1895. A plant collected by Ernest Edward Galpin on Mount Kinangop in the southern Aberdare Range of Kenya, and also kept at Kew, was regarded different enough by the very young John Hutchinson, who named it "Landtia lobulata" in 1914.