Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial, suffrutescent shrubs, scentless to slightly malodorous; generally less than 0.25 m in height, prostrate or scandent; usually white to light grey-green in overall appearance due to high density of epidermal bladder-cell trichomes.

Stems: Stems striated and ribbed alternating green or red with white due to a mealy pubescence, young growth sometimes whiter and more densely pubescent, sometimes becoming woody proximally, periderm creamy white to light brown, occasionally splitting.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades broadly deltoid to rhombic, 3.0–10.3 x 3.2–11.6 mm, succulent at (1.0–)1.5–3.5 mm thick. Apex obtuse to emarginate. Base truncate to cuneate. Surfaces mealy pubescent, but Upper surfaces less so and generally greener than lower surface. Margins usually 3(–5)-lobed. Veins palmate, generally with 1 or 3 primary veins. Petioles 5–9(–15) mm. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence a terminal panicle, branching with hundreds of sessile flowers, generally densely arranged; bracts present at proximal branching nodes, rhombic to lanceolate, decreasing in size distally. Flowers bisexual (perfect), small, protogynous; 1.8–2.0 3 1.4–1.8 mm. Calyx lobes 5, 0.7–1.0 x 0.7–0.9 mm, margins scarious towards apex, glabrous, crenate, white to translucent, mealy pubescent, completely enclosing (or nearly so) the fruit at maturity. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 5; filaments 0.9–1.1 mm, opposite calyx lobes; anthers dorsifixed, extrose, 0.3–0.5 mm. Ovary superior; pistil Y–shaped; stalk 0.2–0.3 mm in length, attached at center of ovary disk; branches 0.5–0.8 mm in length.

Fruit: Fruit a simple dry utricle; discoid; weakly pentagonal; 0.5–0.6 3 0.3–0.4 mm; red–brown to dark–brown; mealy pubescent. Seeds 1 per fruit; dark brown; horizontal or sometimes vertical; ca. 0.8 mm in diameter; the surface papillose; margins indistinct.

Ploidy:

Habitat: In soils of cinder and basalt origin or in soils derived from lithified sand dunes.

Elevation Range: