Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial prostrate or sprawling, rhizomatous subshrubs 1.5–6 dm tall, glabrous to pubescent.

Stems: Stems wiry, ± thorny, many-branched, older stems often leafless with leaf bases persistent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite and decussate (pairs of leaves alternating 90 degrees between nodes); short–shoot leaves in fascicles of 2–4(–6), similar to long–shoot leaves. Blades obovate, 5–15 mm long, 0.9–6 mm wide, slightly revolute, connate in pairs by the membranous base. Upper surfaces scattered-hairy to puberulous; lower surfaces mostly exposed. Margins entire, often revolute. Sessile and often sheathing at base. Petioles 0.7–1.5 (–21) mm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary or in terminal or axillary, divaricately branched dichasia. Claw 3–6.5 mm long, appendages bifid. Flowers bisexual (perfect), sessile. Calyx cylindrical, 4.5–7 mm long, pubescent. Corolla of (4)5(6) petals; petals pale pink, spatulate to narrowly oblong–oblanceolate, (4–)5–11(–14) mm long; distinct, imbricate, base clawed. Stamens (4–)6(–8), in 2 unequal whorls; ovary 3(4)-carpellate. Ovary superior, 1-celled; 3(4)-carpellate; styles 1, elongate, cleft into 2–4 filiform lobes; stigmas 1–3(4).

Fruit: Capsules ovoid; 3–5 mm long. Seeds few to numerous; seed coat crustaceous; endosperm abundant and starchy. seeds 1–20; brown; fusiform; 0.9–1.5 mm long.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Native to coastal salt marshes and inland in saline soils from California to Baja California and Sonora; Mexico; and Chile.

Elevation Range: