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: