A dwarf shrub up to 15 cm (6 in) or so. Branches hirsute with stiff hairs, arising from the rootstock or base of the stem, at first upright then lengthening and becoming subprocumbent about 3 cm from the ground with the flower heads facing downwards. Leaves 4-nate, about 4 mm long, lanceolate, slightly spreading, imbricate at first, later about equalling the internodes, sulcate to subopen-backed, hirsute with stiff hairs. Flowers in cernuous, capitate heads, up to 12 flowers in each; peduncles about 3-5 mm long and, like the bracts and sepals, hirsute with long, stiff hairs about 2 mm long, those on the latter gland-tipped and viscid; bracts 4 mm long, two approximate and sepal-like, the third nearly basal, lanceolate, widely sulcate, white towards the base, green towards the apex. Sepals 3 mm long, 0.5 mm wide in the middle, narrow oblong, acuminate from a wider base. Corolla 4.5-5 mm long, tubular-urceolate, variable with age and position in the head, glabrous, dry, white; lobes not spreading, obtuse, 1 mm long. Filaments rather broad and more or less kinked at the apex; anthers included or just manifest at maturity, 1.3 mm long, dorsifixed, cuneate, obtuse at the base and lobed, deeply bipartite, scabrid, dark brown, appendiculate; pore about 3/4 the length of the cell; crests 1 mm long, broad, lacerate and more or less pointed at the base, yellow. Ovary glabrous; style exserted; stigma capitate with four horn-shaped processes.
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Small shrub, up to 400 mm tall, covered with sticky glandular hairs, except sometimes on corolla. Leaves in whorls of 4. Flowers in pendulous clusters of up to 12 at branch tips, bracts, bracteoles and calyx green, corolla narrowly urn-shaped, 5 mm long, white, anthers included, with large, basal appendages.
Low, creeping shrublet to 15 cm. Flowers medium, clustered in pendulous heads, narrowly urn-shaped, white, sometimes hairy.
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