Small rosulate annual.. Leaves subulate to filiform, 1–3.5 cm. long, 0.2–1.0 mm. wide, tapering to a slender acuminate or setaceous tip.. Scapes 10–± 50, filiform, 3–15 cm. high, 2–4-ribbed; sheaths shorter or longer than the leaves, inflated upwards and deeply slit, the limb obtuse to acute, sometimes splitting.. Capitulum globose to slightly dome-shaped, 1.5–3(–3.5) mm. diameter, black, the bracts loose with the flowers visible among them; involucral bracts ± as wide as the capitulum, grey or infrequently light brown (lighter than rest of capitulum), scarious, 0.6–1.2 mm. long, obovate to subrotund with a rounded tip, spreading at maturity; floral bracts obovate to obovate-oblong, blackish, glabrous, obtuse to acute; receptacle glabrous or thinly hairy; flowers dimerous, blackish, 0.7–1.0 mm. long, completely glabrous.. Male flowers: sepals free, narrowly oblanceolate-oblong, obliquely erose-truncate; petals unequal, very small and included within the calyx, eglandular, one 0.3 mm. long, emarginate, the other vestigial; anthers black.. Female flowers: sepals very variable, concave and keeled, broad with gibbous overlapping margins and winged keel, the wing scarious, up to 0.6 mm. wide with a coarsely toothed margin and the upper sepal-margins also toothed, varying to narrowly falcate and unwinged or at most with a small tooth at the centre back, the tip acute to cuspidate; petals dimorphic, eglandular, the dorsal oblanceolate, 1.0 mm. long, entire to emarginate, the ventral shorter and narrower, linear-oblong, bidentate.. Seeds ellipsoid, 0.3 mm. long, brown, smooth.. Fig. 3/7.
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