Plants perennial, mat-forming. Taproots moderately stout, woody. Stems ± erect, gray-green, 10-20 cm, glabrous or often stipitate-glandular, especially distally, internodes of stems 1-6 times as long as leaves (proximal leaves often shorter than internodes), 2-3 stolons radiating from crown, 6-20 cm. Leaves overlapping, loosely proximally, evenly spaced, connate proximally, with tight, scarious sheath 0.3-0.8 mm; blade ± straight to outwardly curved, gray-green, shallowly concave, 3-veined, often prominently so abaxially, needlelike, 5-11 × 0.5-0.9 mm, rigid, margins not thickened, scarious in proximal 2, stipitate-glandular, apex green to purple, acute to obtuse, navicular, dull, stipitate-glandular throughout; axillary leaves weakly developed among proximal cauline leaves. Inflorescences 7-25-flowered, open cymes; bracts lance-olate to subulate, herbaceous, margins scarious. Pedicels 0.3-1.5 cm, often stipitate-glandular. Flowers: hypanthium disc-shaped; sepals 1-3-veined (weakly in flower), ovate to lanceolate, (herbaceous portion narrowly lanceolate to linear-oblong), 3.5-4.8 mm, not enlarging in fruit, apex green to purple, narrowly acute to acuminate, not hooded, stipitate-glandular; petals broadly oblanceolate, 1.6-1.8 times as long as sepals, apex rounded, entire. Capsules sessile, ovoid, 3.5-5 mm, equaling sepals. Seeds reddish brown to brown, oblong-elliptic, 2-2.4 mm, tuberculate.
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