Herbs, perennial, erect, 20-65 cm tall. Stems 4-angled, usuually glabrous, rarely shortly hairy, hispidulous at nodes, angles thickened. Leaves in whorls of 4, sessile or subsessile; blade drying papery or thinly leathery, linear-lanceolate or lanceolate to ovate, (10-)15-40(-80) × (1-)3-15 mm, glabrous or sparsely puberulent to hispidulous and/or pilose, abaxially never with striate to punctate glandular idioblasts, base cuneate to subrounded, margins usually revolute and antrorsely scaberulous to hispidulous, apex acute or usually narrowly tapered then obtuse to rounded at very tip; principal veins palmate, 3. Inflorescences terminal, elongate or broadly paniculiform, 2-15 cm, with several-to many-flowered cymes in axils of uppermost leaves and terminal; peduncles glabrous or puberulent at nodes, smooth or scaberulous; bracts ligulate, lanceolate, or elliptic, 1-4 mm; pedicels 0.5-2 mm elongating in fruit to 3.5 mm. Ovary subglobose, 0.8-1 mm, glabrous or sparsely to densely strigillose to pilosulous. Corolla white or pale yellow, rotate, 3-4 mm in diam., glabrescent, lobed for 3/4 or more; lobes 4, ovate-lanceolate, acute. Mericarps subglobose, 1-2 mm, pericarp firmly attached but sometimes ± inflated, glabrous or ± densely hairy with ± appressed, ascending, or spreading, straight or curved, but hardly truly uncinate trichomes 0.3-0.5 mm. Fl. May-Aug(-Sep), fr. (May-)Jun-Oct.
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Erect perennial 2–8 dm, the numerous stems commonly short-bearded just beneath the nodes, otherwise glabrous or scaberulous; lvs in 4’s, glabrous or scabrous, lance-linear, 1.5–4.5 cm, 3-nerved, the tip minutely rounded, not mucronate; sterile axillary branches with smaller lvs often developed; fls numerous in terminal, rather showy cymose panicles, with white or slightly creamy cor 3.5–7 mm wide; fr 2 mm, glabrous or with short, straight or curled (not hooked) hairs; 2n=44, 66. In a wide variety of not too dry habitats; circumboreal, s. in Amer. to Del., Ky., Mo. and Calif. June, July.
A herb. It keeps growing from year to year. The stems are leafy and often in clusters. The base is woody. The leafy stems are 70 cm high. The leaves do not have stalks. The leaves are narrow and in rings of four. They are 2.5-7 cm long. The flowers are small and in many flowered clusters at the ends of the stems.
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