Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Sprawling perennial herbs, becoming woody toward base.

Stems: Stems often swollen at the nodes, terete, 4–angled or –ridged, 3–10 dm long, multi–stemmed from the base, the primary stems usually much branched, weakly ascending to nearly decumbent, producing matted clumps, pale purple, glabrate below, glandular–puberulent and somewhat viscid in the inflorescence.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves opposite. Blades narrowly lanceolate to narrowly elliptic, falcate, 3–8.8 cm long, 0.4–2.4 cm wide. Apex attenuate and ± recurved. Base leaf bases often connate around the stem. Surfaces glandular–puberulent or glabrate, especially toward base, the hairs translucent, straight, ± erect, 0.05––0.15 mm long; blades thin and membranous. Margins weakly revolute. 3 principal veins, the midvein excentric. Petioles 0–0.3 (–0.6) cm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence terminal, with 18–149 flowers, 5–22 cm long, open, moderately to densely glandular–puberulent, the hairs 0.15–0.25 mm long; bracts green, narrowly linear–elliptic to subulate, falcate and often somewhat twisted, those of central axis 2–31 mm long, those of branches and flowers 1–12 mm long; pedicel filiform, 7–16 mm long, inconspicuously flattened. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Sepals 3.3–4.5 mm long, lanceolate, green to purple, opaque, strongly reflexed and convex in the proximal ¼, producing a small transverse bulge, the distal part concave, sometimes shallowly navicular at apex, oriented at ca. 30° angle to the pedicel, moderately to densely glandular–puberulent, the hairs 0.05–0.15 mm long, margins conspicuously scarious, ciliate, apex attenuate to subulate. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 10; filaments dimorphic, the antisepalous whorl 4.5–5.8 mm long, the alternate whorl 4–5 mm long; anthers 0.85–1 mm long, yellow. Ovary superior, 1-celled, placentation free-central; styles 3(–4).

Fruit: Capsules ca. 2.5–3 mm long; narrowly ovoid. Seeds relatively few; ca. 0.6––0.7 mm long; suborbicular; compressed; the surface transversely rugose; perisperm starchy; hard or rarely soft; true endosperm absent.

Ploidy: 2n = probably 60*.

Habitat: Scattered and sometimes locally common in diverse mesic forest.

Elevation Range: 360–870 m.