Suffruticose, to about 1 m tall, strongly branched from the base with slender flexuous, greenish or reddish-blotched branches; sparsely to copiously but inconspicuously pubescent, the hairs-in varying proportions-glandular, simple-pilose to 2 mm long from a pustular base, bifurcate, and stellulate or coarsely stellate with arms to 1 mm long. Leaf blades deep green, thin, up to 3 cm long, nearly as broad, 3-(or 5-) lobed or nearly trifoliolate, the terminal lobe more or less linear, pinnate-lobulate. serrate or dentate below the mostly trifid apex or to the base, or the terminal lobe ovate to oblong-ovate with a mostly rounded apex, the lateral lobes of similar shape, spreading, often with a recurved secondary lobe along the lower edge, the base of the leaf truncate to subcordate, the surface often minutely white-punctate, upper surface plane and openly pubescent with mostly glandular and setose simple hairs, lower surface generally with few-branched stellate hairs dominant; stipules spreading, asymmetrically ovate, 1-4 mm long, usually puberulent. Flowers 1-3 in the upper leaf axils, often greatly exceeded by the subtending leaf, horizontal at anthesis; pedicels very slender, to 7(-15) mm long, obscurely articulate near the apex. Involucral bracts 3, thin, green, arising at the base of. or up to 0.75 mm below, the calyx, at anthesis spreading, narrowly oblanceolate to very narrowly elliptic, 3-6.5 mm long, 0.5-1(-1.5) mm broad, pubescent mostly with glandular and simple hairs, sometimes stellulate as well. Calyx 4.5-7 mm long, slightly accrescent, thin, with green lobes and faintly nerved, yellowish tube, inconspicuously open-pubescent, the hairs glandular, stellate, and simple-pilose, the last to 2 mm long on the lobe margins, the lobes spreading, narrow-triangular, lanceolate or narrow-ovate, acute or acuminate, 2.8-5 mm long, 1-3.5 mm broad, exceeding the tube. Petals spreading in a flat whorl, not overlapping, pale magenta marginally and distally with a deep magenta spot basicentrally, obovate, to 10 mm long, 4-6 mm broad, apically rounded obliquely to subemarginate, sometimes slightly erase, the base biauriculate, bearded, dorsally glabrous or nearly so, ventrally stellulate. Staminal column 4-6 mm long, sometimes magenta between the petals, otherwise white up to the lower filaments, then again magenta, with a well-defined, dense, central ring of stellate hairs; filaments pale magenta, to 2 mm long, arising over the upper 1-2 mm of the column: anthers 35-58, deep magenta. Fruit discoid, black, glabrous, 4.5-5 mm in diam., tightly enclosed by the calyx, the apex broadly concave; carpels 9-11, more or less transversely oblong-elliptic in lateral view, to 1.75 mm high, 2.2 mm broad, ventro-apically slanted towards the style and with a very shallow groove bordered by two low ridges sometimes forming slight projections, laterally and dorsally the walls smooth, the edges sometimes slightly ridged, midvein obscure; endoglossum obscure; mature carpels indehiscent or perhaps slightly dehiscent ventrobasally. Seeds reddish-brown to reddish-black, to 2 mm high, 1.6 mm broad, filling the locule, minutely papillate.
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