Rounded annual or short-lived perennial c. 30 cm high, monoecious. Leaves petiolate, thin with a thin scurfy indumentum (or developing a silvery sheen); lamina broadly obovate to rhomboid, 10–15 mm long, rounded at apex, sinuate on margin; petiole c. half length of and grading into lamina. Flowers in mixed axillary clusters. Fruiting bracteoles fused, subcampanulate, seemingly sessile, scurfy pubescent; tube compressed obconical, c. 3 mm long, slightly inflated, fibrous, the upper half with a compressed spherical cavity enclosing the utricle; wing ± horizontal to undulate, reticulate, almost circular and sinuate on margin or divided into semi-circular halves, in all 5–8 mm diam.; apex flat and continuous with wings or produced in centre into a narrowly triangular 2-lobed tip to 2 mm long. Seed circular; radicle basal, horizontal.
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