Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Prostrate subshrubs, sometimes forming mats.

Stems: Stems prostrate, decumbent, or sometimes ascending, producing many short side branches along the length of the main stem, 1–5(–10) dm long, flowering stems ascending to erect.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Usually alternate, distributed along the stem or, on young or flowering stems, densely clustered toward the tips and appearing whorled, thick but not fleshy. Blades linear–lanceolate to spatulate, 1–3(–5) cm long, (0.1–)0.2–0.5(–0.8) cm wide. Base blade gradually tapering to base. Surfaces densely soft, silky, appressed villous. Margins usually entire. Petiolate or sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in short, congested, bracteate cymes 0.8–1.3 cm long. Peduncles (1.5–)3–6.5 cm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic or occasionally slightly irregular. Flowers sweetly fragrant. Calyx stiff, deeply 5-lobed, the lobes linear, unequal, 1–2 usually slightly broader than others, 2.5–3.5 mm long, densely appressed pubescent; sepals distinct or connate at base, sometimes to above the middle. Corolla white to pale purple, funnelform, 5–6-lobed, twice as long as the calyx, 6–11 mm long, the tube 5–8 mm long, appressed villous externally, especially on the tube; (4)5(6)-lobed, the tube often with scales at the summit opposite the lobes, formed by invagination of the corolla tube, the lobes imbricate or convolute, rarely valvate. Stamens as many as corolla lobes, subsessile, inserted on the corolla tube, not exserted. Ovary superior, 4-celled, entire, rounded, or 2–4-lobed; ovules usually 4, 2 per carpel, eventually 1 per cell, sometimes fewer by abortion, anatropous, erect, ascending, or nearly horizontal, rarely pendulous; style simple, terminal, seated in the pericarp; stigma with a fertile discoid base and a sterile, apical, often forked appendage.

Fruit: Fruit dry; lobed or unlobed; breaking up into nutlets; nutlets 4; 1–seeded; obovoid; slightly compressed; ca. 1 mm long; appressed villous. Seeds 1–4; endosperm absent or; if present; fleshy and scanty.

Ploidy: 2n = 28

Habitat: occurring in sandy sites in coastal areas.

Elevation Range: