Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Low annual herbs.

Stems: Stems usually prostrate or decumbent, 0.1–0.2 m long, shaggy villous or sometimes glabrate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades elliptic–ovate or oblong–ovate to linear–oblong, 4–17 mm long, 2–5 mm wide. Apex various. Base truncate. Surfaces sparsely villous; upper surfaces often glabrate. Margins serrulate. Petioles 1–1.5 mm long. Stipules deltate, 1–1.5 mm long, usually 2–3–parted, villous.

Flowers: Flowers in cyathia solitary at nodes of short, congested, leafy, lateral shoots; staminate flowers 2–5 per cyathium. involucre ca. 0.8 mm high, villous, glands 4, oblong, minute, appendages short, white, margins irregularly crenate. Flowers unisexual and highly reduced. Pistillate flowers solitary, on a gynophore; staminate flowers in 5 groups or cymules, each with 1 to several flowers. Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla (petals) absent. Male flower reduced to a single stamen, with an articulation at junction of pedicel and filament, subtended by slender bracteoles. Ovary superior, 3-carpellate; ovules 1 per cell, anatropous.

Fruit: Capsules ovoid; 3–angled; 1.2– 1.4 mm long; uniformly strigose. Seeds pale brown with a white coat; oblong; 4–angled; ca. 1 mm long; the faces with nearly regular; low; transverse ridges that sometimes slightly include the angles.

Ploidy: 2n = 28; 42; 56

Habitat:

Elevation Range: