Plants perennial, cespitose to mat-forming. Taproots filiform to slightly thickened. Stems ascending to erect or procumbent, green, (0.8-)3-12 cm, glabrous, internodes of all stems 0.5-10 times as long as leaves. Leaves barely if at all overlapping, connate proximally, with tight, scarious to herbaceous sheath 0.2-0.5 mm; blade straight to slightly outward curved, green, flat, 1-veined, occasionally 3-veined abaxially, linear to linear-oblong or subulate, (2-)4-10 × (0.3-)0.5-1.5 mm, flexuous, margins not thickened, scarious, smooth, apex green or purple, mostly rounded, slightly navicular, shiny, glabrous; axillary leaves present among proximal cauline leaves. Inflorescences 1-3(-5)-flowered, open cymes or flowers solitary, terminal; bracts subulate, herbaceous. Pedicels 0.3-3 cm, glabrous. Flowers: hypanthium disc-shaped; sepals 1-3-veined, often prominently, becoming ribbed in fruit, broadly elliptic to ovate (herbaceous portion broadly elliptic to ovate), (1.5-)2.5-3.2 mm, to 4 mm in fruit, apex green to purple, acute to acuminate, not hooded, glabrous; petals lanceolate to spatulate or orbiculate, (0.6-)0.8-1 times as long as sepals, apex rounded, entire, or petals rudimentary or absent. Capsules on stipe ca. 0.1-0.2 mm, ovoid, 2.5-3.2 mm, shorter than or equaling sepals. Seeds brown or reddish brown, orbiculate with radicle prolonged into rounded bump, somewhat compressed, 0.4-0.6 mm, smooth or obscurely low-tuberculate (50×). 2n = 22 (Europe), 26, 30 (Europe).
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