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Annuals with erect, rarely decumbent branches up to 100 mm long, glabrous, sparsely branched with lateral branches usually very much shorter than central one. Leaves sessile, lanceolate to narrowly triangular, 4-6(-10) x 1-2(-3) mm, bluntly acute but drawn into a sharp point in shade forms, more or less flat above and convex below, glabrous, rarely denticulate along lower margin, fleshy, green to brown. Inflorescence a thyrse, usually with many dichasia sessile or almost so, flowers 5-merous, on short pedicels which elongate somewhat when fruiting. Calyx: lobes narrowly triangular to lanceolate, 1-1.5 mm long, acute and usually drawn into a colourless awn, fleshy, green to brown. Corolla more or less cup-shaped, scarcely fused basally, pale yellow to brown; lobes triangular-lanceolate, 0.5-0.8 mm long, acute to acuminate and folded along apices, erect. Stamens with yellow anthers. Squamae oblong-cuneate, 0.25-0.4 x 0.1-0.15 mm, with rounded apices, gradually constricted downwards. Seeds 2, released by apical pore and later by basal circumscissile split, broadly ellipsoid, 0.31-0.36 x 0.18-0.19 mm, bluntly acute to obtuse and gradually constricted towards both ends, not conspicuously ribbed, with cell differentiation not visible, minutely rugulose.
Succulent, shrub, 0.1-0.6(-1.5) m high; tuber exposed above ground. Leaves linear to linear-lanceolate, 17-45 x 2-8 mm; lower surface tomentose; stipules spiny, in pairs, 20-25 mm long, spine cushion hairy. Inflorescence few-flowered. Flowers salver-shaped, crimson, pink, rarely white, with dark, central, longitudinal stripe on lobes. Corolla: tube 10-18 mm long, narrowing above insertion of stamens; lobes obovate to oblanceolate, 8-18 mm long. Gynoecium apocarpous, bicarpellate. Circumgynoecial glandular disc 5-lobed, much shorter than ovary. Style head cylindrical. Flowering time Apr.-June. Follicles 80-100 mm long.
A spiny succulent plant. It forms a small shrub 60 cm tall. It has milky sap and a large tuber half buried in the ground. The leaves do not have stalks. They are alternate and occur in tufts They are narrowly sword shaped and green above and hairy underneath. The flowers are in clusters at the ends of branches. They are red or pink.
Shrub, up to 0.6 m high with a partially underground tuberous stem. Stems succulent, cylindrical in cross-section. Leaves in tufts; blade narrow. Flowers: 1-few at tips of branches; corolla with a narrow tube, flat, expanded lobes, pink to crimson, usually with darker stripes, rarely white; Sep.-Dec. Fruit a follicle.
Like P. bispinosum but flowers finely hairy, tube narrowly funnel-shaped 3-4 mm diam. and lobes 8-18 mm long, pink to crimson, sometimes white.
