Erect perennial to 20 cm high with woody base. Branches slender, woolly. Leaves alternate, linear, 7–25 mm long, appressed-villous. Flowers solitary or paired, bisexual, shortly tomentose. Fruiting perianth thin-walled, sparsely pilosulose, straw-coloured when dry, with 6 delicate radially-positioned vertical wings on top of a horizontal wing; tube flat, 2.5 mm diam., 6-veined; horizontal wing simple, circular, c. 7 mm diam., continuous with tube; vertical wings 4+2 on upper side of perianth, intertepaline (the contiguous pair placed either side of the radicular slit) attached to horizontal wing and to arched upper perianth, c. 3.5 mm high; upper perianth forming a convex crustaceous ring with short inflexed membranous lobes.
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