Subshrubs, erect, to 40 cm tall; stems glabrous, terete to 4-angled with angles obtuse to acute or ridged. Leaves sessile to petiolate; petiole to 8 mm, glabrous; blade drying stiffly leathery, narrowly lanceolate, narrowly elliptic, or linear-lanceolate, 3-8 × 0.4-1.2 cm, glabrous and shiny, base cuneate to usually acute and decurrent, margins revolute at least when dry, apex long acuminate; secondary veins indistinct; stipules interpetiolar, triangular, ovate, or oblong-ovate, 3-5 mm, glabrous, shiny and hardened, acute to acuminate. Inflorescence terminal and sometimes in uppermost leaf axils, congested-cymose to subcapitate, flattened-globose, 1.5-2 cm in diam., glabrous, several to many flowered, sessile, subtended by 2 pairs of leaves or leaflike bracts with inner (i.e., distal) pair ca. 1/2 as large as outer (i.e., proximal), or axillary cymes few flowered and without leaflike bracts; floral bracts elliptic to triangular, 2-6 mm; pedicels to 2 mm. Flowers sessile to shortly pedicellate. Calyx glabrous, shiny; hypanthium portion obconic, ca. 1 mm; limb lobed for ca. 1/2; lobes triangular, lanceolate, or spatulate, 2-4 mm. Corolla white, tubular; tube ca. 3.5 mm, pilosulous in throat; lobes lanceolate, ca. 11 mm. Anthers ca. 2 mm. Fruit capsular, ovoid or ellipsoid, 3-4 mm in diam., glabrous, cartilaginous to hard, septicidal then tardily loculicidal; seeds several. Fl. Apr-Jun, fr. Jul-Sep.