Plants perennial; caudex branched, woody. Stems pro-cumbent, branched from base, hirtellose; flowering stems 7-45 cm; sterile stems 3-10 cm. Leaves: stipules narrowly lanceolate, 6-13 mm, apex acuminate, often deeply cleft; blade linear, 10-30 × 0.4-1 mm, leathery, apex short-spinose, minutely hirtellous to puberulent. Cymes terminal, 3-10+-flowered, somewhat open to compact, often forming clusters 6-30 mm wide. Flowers 5-merous, narrowly ovoid, with enlarged hypanthium and calyx tapering gradually distally, 2.8-5.1 mm, glabrous to puberulent, especially proximally; sepals brown to yellowish, midrib and lateral pair of veins prominent, lanceolate to oblong-lanceolate, 2-2.9 mm, leathery to rigid, margins whitish, 0.1-0.2 mm wide, papery, apex terminated by awn, hood rounded-triangular, awn curved outward, green to red-brown, ± conic, 0.4-1.1 mm, scabrous, distinct spine absent; staminodes filiform, 0.8-1 mm; style 1, cleft in distal 1/ 5, 1.2-2 mm. Utricles ovoid to obovoid, 1.8-2 mm, smooth, glabrous.
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Taprooted perennial with numerous glabrous or rough-puberulent, prostrate to erect stems 1–4 dm; lvs narrowly linear, 2–3 cm × 0.4–0.8 mm, mucronate; stipules entire, hyaline, lance-attenuate, often connate at base; fls numerous in repeatedly forking cymes, sessile, the alternate bracts foliar and provided with a pair of hyaline stipules; sep 3–4 mm; lance-linear, 3-nerved, the awn glabrous, thick, divergent, usually under 1 mm. Open or wooded places, crevices and ledges or rocky places, usually at low altitudes. July–Oct. Our plants, occurring in w. Md., W.Va., and w. Va., are usually low and matted, with numerous sterile shoots, the stems completely glabrous or sometimes minutely puberulent above; these are var. virginica. (P. dichotoma Nutt., non DC.) Another var. occurs in Okla. and Tex.
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