Annual or perennial herb (the reports of collectors vary), ± 0.3–1 m., with several stems from the base; stems usually simple, sometimes branched, procumbent or straggling, ridged, striate, furnished with white papillate multicellular hairs.. Leaf-blade lanceolate to broadly ovate, 1–4.8 × 0.7–2.2 cm., acute to acuminate and mucronate at the apex, shortly cuneate to attenuate at the base, subglabrous or usually the lower surface of the midrib and principal veins with divergent whitish hairs; petiole rather slender, up to ± 1.5 cm. in the lower leaves, shortening above, ± white pilose.. Flowers glabrous, white to pinkish, in slender elongated or denser long-pedunculate axillary racemes (1–)2–6 cm. long, laxer below; peduncles slender, the lower up to 11 cm., both they and the inflorescence-axis glabrous; bracts persistent, ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, ± 2.5–3 mm., glabrous or sparingly ciliate, membranous, stramineous with a brownish percurrent midrib, each subtending a partial inflorescence of 2–3 hermaphrodite flowers.. Fertile flowers with the 2 outer perianth segments firm, elliptic-oblong, 3.5–4 mm., 3–5-nerved, acute, shortly mucronate with the excurrent midrib; (2–)3 inner segments slightly shorter, hyaline and delicate, blunt or erose, 1–3-nerved, the midrib ceasing near or well below the apex; stamens subequalling the ovary with the thickened upper margin of the latter falling away from the base of the style at an angle of ± 45°; style 1.75–2 mm., slender, the stigmas finally recurved.. Capsules compressed, ± 4–4.5 mm. wide and slightly shorter, delicate below but firm at the apex, the style set in a semilunar sinus on each side of which the apex is obliquely truncated.. Seed ovoid, ± 3 mm., brownish, rugulose, apparently commencing to develop within the fallen partial inflorescence, which may serve as a water source.. Fig. 8.
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