Glabrous throughout, often much and widely branched (frequently from the very base), annual, with a thin main root, 2-35 cm high, erect or with prostrate main-branches, when old often tinged brownish red. Stem thin, angular. Leaves usually in false whorls of 3-9, mostly 3-5, not rarely partly opposite, entire, pale beneath, 10-50 by 1½-10 mm; lowermost ones (often disappearing before anthesis) ± rosulate, oblong-obovate-spathulate, distinctly petioled; higher leaves rarely of the same shape, mostly lanceolate or linear-lanceolate from a narrowed acute base, shortly petioled or sub-sessile, acute; midrib prominent beneath. Flowers in terminal or leaf-opposed peduncled lax cymes with often long racemiform ultimate branches. Bracts small, persistent. Pedicels erecto-patent, thin, 1½-6 mm, persistent and decurved till long after the fall of the fruiting perianth. Tepals oval-oblong, obtuse, inside white, outside green with white margins, at an advanced age often turning brown, 1¼-2 mm long, during anthesis (in sunny morning-hours) widely patent, afterwards con-niving to a globe. Stamens 3; filaments filiform, not dilated in the middle, short. Styles white. Capsule broadly ellipsoid, faintly 3-lobed, ± 2 mm long. Seeds reniform, darkbrown, finely granulate, ± ¾ mm diam.
In dry as well as in moist regions, mostly in settled areas, often in sandy or stony localities, sometimes on old lava-streams (Ternate), 5-1200 m, fields, gardens, premises, open places, teak-forests, locally often abundant.
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Locally abundant as a minor weed in cultivated areas, including rice fields and open grasslands, but also in sandy or stony localities, at low and medium altitudes.
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