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A stout succulent herb. It can be woody at the base. It has a taproot. It is well-branched and straggling. It grows 3 m high. The leaves are alternate. The leaf blades are 2-13 cm long and 1-4 cm wide. They taper to the base. The flowers are in clusters on short shoots in the axils of leaves. They are yellow. The fruit is a capsule 102 cm long and 1-2 mm wide. It develops a thick hard wall. There are several rows of seeds in each capsule.
Seeds 0·6–0·75 × 0·4–0·5 mm., uniseriate in each locule of the capsule, diagonal, brown, obovoid; raphe inconspicuous, each seed loosely but completely embedded in an easily detached piece of soft powdery endocarp 0·6–1 mm. long, 0·5–0·7 mm. wide.
Capsule 10–20 × 1·2 mm., relatively thin-walled, glabrous, terete, light brown, at first thin-walled and torulose, but as the endocarp swells and hardens, becoming smooth; pedicels 0·5–3 mm. long.
Stout succulent herb, sometimes woody at the base, up to 3 m. tall, well branched, glabrous except for minute hairs on the midribs and margins of young leaves; stems usually somewhat reddish.
Leaves 2–13 × 0·5–3·5 cm., lanceolate or broadly elliptical, narrowly cuneate at the base, the apex subacute; main veins on each side of midrib 13–22; petiole 2–20 mm. long.
Stamens 4; filaments 0·8–1·2 mm. long; anthers c. 0·5 × c. 0·8 mm., weakly attached to the filament, shedding pollen directly on the stigma at anthesis.
Disk elevated c. 0·5 mm., with a depressed nectary fringed with short hairs surrounding the base of each petal.
Sepals 4, 1·7–3× 0·4–1 mm., lanceolate-ovate, mucronate, usually with reddish margins.
Style 0·5–0·8 mm. long; stigma c. 1 mm. thick, c. 0·5 mm. high, depressed-globose.
Flowers clustered on short axillary shoots also bearing reduced leaves.
Petals 1·5–3·5 × 1·2–2·6 mm., nearly circular in outline.
Pollen shed in tetrads.
