Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Diffuse, slender, branched annual herbs.

Stems: Stems 0.5–3 dm long, slightly scabrid, at least in lower portions.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Whorled, 6–8 per node. Blades narrowly lanceolate to linear, 4–10 mm long, 0.3–1.5(–2) mm wide. Upper surfaces usually slightly hispid. Margins slightly revolute, margins and midrib antrorsely scabrid. Stipules leaf-like.

Flowers: Flowers in delicate, lax inflorescences, peduncles 5–20 mm long, pedicels filiform, 0.5–3 mm long, deflexed after anthesis. Flowers insect-pollinated, bisexual (perfect) or rarely unisexual, often heterostylous. Sepals obsolete. Corolla yellowish red, 0.5–1 mm in diameter, (3)4-lobed. Stamens 3–4 and alternate with the corolla lobes; filaments usually inserted on the corolla tube or throat; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, 2-lobed, 2-celled; ovules 1 per cell; styles 2, terminal, slender; stigmas capitellate, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit didymous; dry or fleshy; 0.5–0.7 mm long; consisting of 2 indehiscent cocci usually separating at maturity; finely papillose. Seeds with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Sparingly naturalized on damp cliffs.

Elevation Range: 970–980 m.