Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Pale green annual herbs 2–5 dm tall.

Stems: Primary stem erect with several ascending branches, these often rather lax.

Roots: Taproots sometimes becoming ligneous and appearing perennial.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades linear, 1–3 cm long, 0.1–0.4 cm wide. Upper surfaces greatly reduced to minute bracts, glabrous. Margins entire. Narrowed to a short petiole, blade jointed to petiole. Stipules present as an ocreae, hyaline, laciniate, 5–10 mm long.

Flowers: Flowers 1 to several in the axils of the reduced upper leaves and appearing subracemose. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Tepals (4)5(6), usually petaloid, persistent, green, becoming rose toward apex, ca. 1.5 mm long, enlarging up to ca. 2 mm long in fruit. Stamens 3–9, but usually 5, exserted or included; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits.

Fruit: Nuts reddish brown; trigonous; protruding up to ca. ½ its length from or completely enclosed by the persistent tepals; often with 1 face slightly wider than others; ca. 2 mm long; the surface very smooth and glossy.

Ploidy: 2n = 40

Habitat: Pastures.

Elevation Range: ca. 1,000 m.