Erect annual, 35-85 cm. Leaves radical, rosulate (often already withering during anthesis), sessile, oblong to lanceolate, 0.5-4.5 by 0.25-1.5 cm, fleshy, glabrous, narrowed at the base, apex blunt, 3(-5)-nerved. Inflorescences terminal and sometimes axillary, laxly paniculate with up to 4 lateral branches per node (usually irregular and few-flowered); peduncle long, c. 1.5 mm ø, terete, smooth to minutely fluted, glabrous to minutely tomentose especially near the base, with some distant pairs of appressed bract-like leaves, acute-lanceolate, c. 5 mm long, connate at the base, minutely ciliate. Bracts similar but smaller and patent. Pedicels 2-3.5 cm. Calyx campanulate, 3-8 mm long, for 0.5-0.75 connate, glabrous, tube membranous, lobes oblong and acute or semi-orbicular and apiculate, thickened. Corolla salver-shaped, inside sparsely pubescent in the lower half of the tube, and with a thickened fimbriate rim in the mouth, outside (creamy or) salmon-pink to brownish, inside creamy to white; tube slender, 1-1.75 cm, lobes elliptic to oblong, (2-)4-12 mm, shortly acuminate. Filaments c. 6 mm long, anthers basifixed, ovate-lanceolate to linear or sagittate, 1-2 mm, blunt, latero-introrse. Ovary 1-2 mm, tapering into the styles, which are connate fof the far greater part, 5-9 mm long, slender; stigma 2-lobed, 1 mm long. Capsule for the greater part enveloped by the persistent calyx, slender-to globular-mitre-shaped, 5-7.5 by 2-3.5 mm, styles either torn loose or only connected by the stigma when mature. Seeds angular, minutely warty.
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Annual herb, erect, to 96 cm high, glabrous, rarely sparsely squamulose. Stem scapose. Leaves elliptic or oblanceolate, 5–45 mm long, 2.5–15 mm wide. Flowers terminal and axillary, in simple and compound umbellate clusters; pedicels to 32 mm long. Calyx cylindrical, with tissue between ribs thin and translucent; tube 2.5–4 mm long; lobes 2.5–4 mm long, with margins translucent. Corolla white; tube 11–20 mm long; lobes elliptic to oblanceolate, 6.6–13 mm long. Stamen filaments partly adnate to tube, free part 7–11 mm long; anthers obtuse; dehiscence latrorse. Capsule oblong, 5–7 mm long; fruiting style 10–14 mm long.
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