Herbs, perennial, sometimes slightly woody at base, clambering to procumbent, from a thick rootstock with slender, trailing reddish rhizomes. Stems up to 1 m tall, 4-angled to subterete, often caespitose, glabrescent to white pilosulous, hirtellous, and/or pilose often with mixed trichome types, smooth or sparsely scaberulous. Leaves in whorls of 6-10, sessile, frequently reflexed; blade drying papery, from linear and narrowly oblong-oblanceolate to oblong-elliptic or ligulate, (5-)10-28(-32) × (1-)1.5-3(-6) mm, adaxially glabrous and scaberulous, abaxially glabrous to densely white pilosulous or-pilose, base straight to cuneate, margin antrorsely aculeolate and usually markedly revolute, apex obtuse to acute and mucronate with tip to 2 mm; vein 1. Inflorescences with numerous terminal and axillary, congested to fasciculate, leaflike and many-flowered cymes; peduncles glabrous to hirtellous and/or pilosulous, with reduced leaves and leaflike bracts, 1.5-3 mm; pedicels 1-4 mm. Ovary ellipsoid, 0.8-1 mm, glabrous to hispidulous with straight trichomes. Corolla yellowish white to white, funnelform, 1.5-2.5 × 2.5-3 mm, glabrous to sometimes hairy on outside; lobes 4, ca. 1/2 as long as tube, triangular-ovate, acute to apiculate. Mericarps ellipsoid to reniform, 1-1.5 × 1.5-2 mm, glabrous and smooth, granulate or hispidulous, becoming separated in middle as fruit expand but remaining attached at top and bottom. Fl. and fr. May-Oct.
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