Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Coarse annual herbs, silky villous throughout, often densely so, especially on younger parts.

Stems: Stems erect and some prostrate on same plant, 2–5 dm long, branched from base.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades linear to narrowly oblanceolate, 0.5–4 cm long; sometimes succulent. Surfaces of young leaves silky villous. Margins entire. Sessile or narrowed to a pseudopetiole. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary clusters, sessile. Flowers bisexual (perfect), minute. Calyx globose, 5-lobed, lobes incurved, lobes ca. 1 mm long, villous, each one with a reddish, spreading, hooked spine. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 5; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, ovoid, 2–3(–5)-carpellate, 1-celled; ovule 1, placentation basal; stigmas 2–3, dry.

Fruit: Utricle enclosed by the coriaceous calyx. Seeds 1 per fruit; horizontal; lenticular; ca. 1 mm in diameter.

Ploidy: 2n = 18

Habitat: In alkaline soil.

Elevation Range: