Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Many-branched, prostrate, slender perennial herbs.

Stems: Stems rooting at the nodes and forming mats, to 0.5–1.2 dm long, glabrous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades broadly ovate to broadly rhombic–ovate, 3–6 mm long, 1.5–2 mm wide. Apex acute to obtuse. Base cuneate to truncate. Lower surfaces with a few scattered, long, translucent hairs. Margins entire. Stipules adnate to petioles, sometimes with reddish glands on margins or surface, apex sometimes with an appendage.

Flowers: Flowers solitary in the leaf axils; peduncles filiform, flexous, 10–15 mm long. Flowers insect-pollinated, mostly small, bisexual (perfect), isostylous or heterostylous. Calyx cuplike, 4-toothed, the teeth ca. 0.5 mm long, equal, narrowly to braodly triangular, sparsely pubescent. Corolla white, thin, broadly tubular, ca. 2 mm long, the lobes 4, ca. 1 mm long, throat often hairy; nectary disk usually present. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, inserted on the corolla lobes, the anthers, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, dorsifixed. Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, 2-celled; ovules numerous on a peltate placenta; style 1 or as many as carpels, terminal, short or long, included or exserted, glabrous or pubescent, filiform; the stigmas 2, subglobose or elongate, lobed or capitate, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit capsular; oblong–cuneate; thinly cartilaginous; ca. 1.5 mm long; usually with a loculicidally dehiscent beak. Seeds usually numerous; irregularly anguled; smooth or alveolate; ca. 0.3 mm long; areolate; often becoming viscid when moistened; seed coat cells smooth to distinctly punctate; granular or tuberculate; with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: