Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Low, branched, puberulent annual herbs.

Stems: Stems 5–20 cm long, unbranched to many-branched.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades ovate, 3–7 mm long. Base leaf bases often connate around the stem. Surfaces somewhat scabrous. Margins ciliate. 3–5-veined. Sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in open, leafy–bracted cymes. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic.Pedicels 3–11 mm long. Internal nectary ring present, often subtended by a number of bracts. Calyx of 5 sepals, narrowly ovate, 3–3.5 mm long, hispidulous. Corolla of 5 petals, white, occasionally rose or cream–colored, entire or sometimes slightly notched, oblong–obovate, ca. 2 mm. Stamens 10, distinct or adnate to petals at base to form a short tube, which may be adnate to the gynophore or sometimes adnate to lower part of calyx, petaloid staminodes sometimes present; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 1-celled; ovules numerous; styles 5, opposite the sepals, distinct.

Fruit: Capsules olive green; firm; ovoid; 3–4 mm long; dehiscing into twice as many valves as styles. Seeds numerous; grayish black; reniform; 0.4–0.6 mm long; the surface tuberculate; perisperm starchy; hard or rarely soft; true endosperm absent.

Ploidy: 2n = 10; 20; 30; 40; 44

Habitat: Sparingly naturalized in a variety of disturbed habitats.

Elevation Range: 0–3,000 m.