Shrub with spreading, flexible more or less succulent branches, less than 1 m high; monoecious; twigs with dense indumentum of lepidote (but deeply lobed) scales. Leaves thickish; stoutish lepidote petioles 7-20 mm long, the petiolar glands and stipules absent; blades flexible-leathery, elliptic to more commonly ovate, ca 2-4 cm long, 1.2-3 cm broad, greenish and closely stellate-lepidote above (the scales ca 0.3-0.5 mm wide, with the 10-15 radii barely fused at base), pale and silvery-lepidote beneath (the densely overlapping scales ca 0.6-0.7 mm wide with ca 15-20 radii united 1/4 to 1/3 their length); blades 3-5-nerved at base, the other veins com-pletely indistinct, the base rounded to subcordate, the margins entire, the apex acute. Inflorescences terminal, bisexual (reduced ones sometimes unisexual), dis-tinctly pedunculate, ca 1-2 cm long, with 1 (rarely 2) basal female flower and a pedunculate terminal capitulum of ca 4-6 male flowers; bracts stellate-lepidote, caducous and inconspicuous, not over ca 1 mm long. Staminate flowers subsessile or with short stout pedicels less than 1 mm long; calyx-lobes 5, imbricate, ovate to elliptic, obtuse, lepidote on the back, villose on the margins, ca 2.5 mm long and 1.2-1.6 mm broad; receptacle pilose; petals absent; stamens 10-12, the filaments hirsutulous, up to 1.5 mm long, the anthers elliptic, 0.8-0.9 mm long, the con-nectives pustulate. Pistillate flowers subsessile, the stout pedicel only ca 1 mm long in fruit (fruits superficially appearing pedunculate when at the end of the inflorescence peduncle); calyx-lobes 5, subequal, imbricate, ovate to triangular, lepidote, entire, becoming 3-3.5 mm long, 1.8-2.3 mm broad; disc annular, adnate to the base of the calyx, 2.8-3.2 mm wide; petals absent; ovary densely lepidote (scales with ca 12-20 radii connate less than 1/3 their lengths, ca 0.5-0.9 mm wide), the styles free, spreading, 3 times bifid, stellate-lepidote below, ca 1.5-2 mm long. Capsules subglobose, 3-lobed, stellate-lepidote, ca 7-8 mm broad, the columella apically dilated-alate, ca 4-4.5 mm long; seeds plump, ovoidal, grayish or silvery with brownish spots or mottling, sparsely and deciduously stellate, 4.9-5.1 mm long, 3.9-4.2 mm broad, the caruncle massive, convex, subentire, ca 2.5 mm wide.
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