Plants perennial, forming loose to dense mats or clumps, taprooted, with short, prostrate sterile shoots, rarely rhizomatous. Stems: flowering stems usually erect, 10-25 cm, glabrous to sparsely pubescent proximally, more densely so in mid and distal stem, hairs patent to slightly deflexed, multicellular, glandular and eglandular; internodes usually equaling or exceeding leaves; nonflowering shoots present; small axillary tufts of leaves absent. Leaves: sessile (flowering shoots) or petiolate (proximal stems and nonflowering shoots); flowering shoots with blade lanceolate, 5-20 × 2-5 mm, not succulent, apex ± acute, pubescent; proximal stem and nonflowering shoots with blade oblanceolate often spatulate, not succulent, apex obtuse, ± pubescent on both surfaces (rarely subglabrous), with straight, strigose hairs or cilia, hairs pale, fuscous, mostly eglandular. Inflorescences open, dichotomous, (1-)3-10-flowered cymes; bracts lanceolate, distal with scarious margins, proximal herbaceous and foliaceous, pubescence glandular and eglandular. Pedicels erect, angled at base of calyx in fruit, 8-55 mm, 1-5 times as long as capsule, densely pubescent with patent glandular and eglandular hairs. Flowers: sepals lanceolate to lance-elliptic, 3-7 mm, margins broad, apex ± acute, densely glandular-pubescent; petals broadly oblanceolate, 6-12 mm, ± equaling (rarely to 2 times as long as) sepals, apex deeply 2-fid; stamens 10; styles 5. Capsules cylindric, curved, 8-12 mm, ca. 2 times sepals, rarely shorter; teeth 10, erect, margins convolute. Seeds pale to dark brown, 0.7-1.1 mm, tuberculate; testa not inflated, tightly enclosing seed. 2n = 72.
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