Rounded annual or short-lived perennial to 30 cm high, monoecious. Leaves thin, rarely leathery, scurfy both sides; lamina deltoid to narrowly rhomboid, acute, 15–30 mm long, base obtuse, margin sinuate to serrate; petiole ±½ length of lamina. Flowers in axillary glomerules. Fruiting bracteoles sessile, fused, globular to obovoid, 8–12 mm long, shortly apiculate, inflated; epidermal covering thin, scurfy or eventually glabrous, on a network of fibrous veins; utricle cavity compressed elliptic in centre of bracteoles with a thin woody wall. Seed erect, broadly elliptic; radicle lateral, erect.