Slender rosulate annual.. Leaves numerous, setaceous, flaccid, 1.5–4 cm. long, scarcely broadened at the base.. Scapes up to 50 or more, 5–12(–15) cm. high, 3–4-ribbed; sheaths shorter than the leaves, inflated upwards, deeply slit.. Capitulum globose to ovoid, 1.5–2 mm. diameter, blackish, the bracts loosely imbricate with the petal-tips visible; involucral bracts as wide as the capitulum, concolorous with the floral bracts, blackish, scarious, broadly obovate, 0.8–1.1 mm. long, rounded; floral bracts similar to the involucral, suborbicular, broadly obtuse with erose upper margin; receptacle shortly pilose; flowers dimerous, flushed grey upwards.. Male flower 0.8–1.0 mm. long: sepals free, oblong-falcate, lightly keeled, denticulate-acute; petals triangular, eglandular, the larger 0.3 mm.; anthers 4, black.. Female flower 1.2 mm. long: sepals narrowly oblong-falcate with the petals and ovary exposed, narrowly winged on the keel or merely inconspicuously thickened, sometimes one or two short hyaline hairs at the top of the wing, acute; petals slightly unequal, narrowly oblanceolate-spathulate, emarginate or denticulate, longer than the sepals.. Seed ellipsoid, 0.3 mm. long, brown, thickly white-reticulate.. Fig. 4/2.
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