Plantago princeps var. princeps is a small shrub or robust perennial herb with hollow, erect, or ascending stems up to 60 cm long, branched, and young internodes ± woolly with reddish brown hairs. The leaves are tufted near the stem tips, with narrowly oblong-lanceolate to narrowly elliptic or sometimes elliptic blades, 6–20 cm long and 1.5–5 cm wide, thick, and coriaceous. The leaf base is slightly narrowed and sessile or gradually attenuates to a winged petiole, with glabrous surfaces or sometimes appressed pilose on the lower side. The margins are minutely and remotely denticulate or entirely smooth, with (3–)5–9 veins converging toward the base and winged petioles up to 5 cm long. The flowers occur on scapes, typically several, ranging from 10 to 50 cm in length, with spikes (7–)11–28 cm long that are glabrous to sparsely pilose and densely flowered. Each flower, which is bisexual (perfect), spreads at nearly a 90° angle to the axis. The calyx comprises four sepals, elliptic to elliptic-ovate, 1.8–3.2 mm long, and is scarious except on the midrib, with an apex that is sometimes minutely erose. The corolla is salverform with four lobes, persistent in fruit, and covers the upper part of the capsule, with spreading lobes 1.5–2 mm long. There are four stamens alternating with the corolla tubes, with filaments adnate to the corolla tube and long-exserted, dithecal anthers that open by longitudinal slits. The superior ovary is 2-carpellate with axile placentation and (2?)4 ovules. The style is terminal and slender. The fruit is a narrowly ovoid-ellipsoid capsule, 3–3.8 mm long, slightly exserted from the persistent calyx, and opens at a point two-thirds to the base or slightly more. It contains 3–4 black ellipsoid to oblong-ellipsoid seeds, 1.5–2.1 mm long, with a surface that has a mucilaginous membrane and a well-developed, firm, translucent endosperm. It inhabits shaded slopes between 480-550 meters.