Decumbent annual or short-lived perennial with slender branches, monoecious. Leaves narrowly elliptic to narrowly oblanceolate or rhomboid, remotely dentate to entire, 10–30 mm long, scaly on both surfaces. Male flowers in axillary glomerules or in short terminal spikes; perianth glabrous. Female flowers clustered in leaf axils. Fruiting bracteoles fused to apex, cylindrical to urceolate (sometimes compressed when young) flattened distally, seemingly sessile or with a short slender stipe (this often developing a spongy cylindrical sheath with age continuous with the bracteoles), in all 4–6 mm long; basal portion often thickened and sometimes tuberculate; distal portion herbaceous and ± flattened, strongly nerved; apex truncate to acute, often shortly 3-toothed. Seed circular to ovate; radicle lateral, slightly exserted.
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