Herbs, dioecious or sometimes sparingly monoecious. Stems slender to stout, mainly 1-5(-7) dm, branching almost throughout; herbage pubescent with scurfy and arachnoid hairs. Leaves alternate, proximalmost on petioles (3-)5-30 mm, becoming subsessile or short petiolate distally; blade 3-veined, ovate to rhombic or orbiculate to elliptic, 0.4-5 × 0.2-3 cm, base rounded to cuneate, margin entire, apex acute to obtuse. Staminate flowers with calyx 4-5-lobed. Fruiting bracteoles sessile, ovate to oblong or broadly cuneate or pan-duriform, 1.5-5.5 × 1.5-5 mm, thick, united to apex, apex truncate to cuspidate or tridentate, surfaces with thickened processes or rarely smooth. Seeds greenish, yellowish, or brown, 0.9-2 mm; radicle superior. 2n = 18.
Alkaline flats and badlands. Saline, usually fine-textured clay or silty substrates, in greasewood, rabbitbrush, shadscale, seepweed, mat-atriplex, juniper-pinyon, and blackbrush communities; at elevations from 700-2,000 metres.
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