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Male flowers: pedicels 0.5 mm long; sepals 6, c. 1 × 1 mm, suborbicular-obovate, rounded, cream-coloured with a greenish midrib; disk glands 6, free, 0.3 mm in diameter, flat or somewhat verruculose, minutely lobulate; stamens 3, filaments connate in the lower two-thirds, 0.75 mm long, anthers 0.3 mm long, vertically held, longitudinally dehiscent.
Leaf blades 0.5–3.5 × 0.4–1.5 cm, elliptic to oblong, subacute, obtuse or rounded, cuneate or rounded at the base, firmly membranaceous, light to medium green above, paler and somewhat glaucescent or purplish-tinged beneath; lateral nerves in 5–8(10) pairs, usually looped near the margin, not prominent above, slightly so beneath.
Very like P. odontadenius, but differing in having the ♀ flowers with broadly elliptic usually shallowly cordate sepals which are white with a narrow, well-defined green midrib, in having the female disc hexalobate with the lobes entire, and in having spreading styles.
Seeds 1.5 × 1.2 × 1 mm, segmentiform, light to dark brown, with 7–9 shallow longitudinal ridges on the dorsal facet, and 6–7 concentric ridges on each ventral facet, with innumerable faint transverse striae between them.
A scaberulous or glabrous erect annual or perennial herb up to 90 cm tall, usually much less, monoecious or rarely dioecious; stems reddish or purplish later becoming wiry.
Male flowers in few-flowered clusters in the lower parts of the lateral shoots, female flowers pendulous and solitary in the upper parts of the lateral shoots.
Scale leaves c. 1 mm long, narrowly triangular-lanceolate to subulate; stipules triangular-lanceolate, otherwise similar to scale leaves.
Foliage leaves distichous; petioles 0.5–1 mm long; stipules c. 1 mm long, narrowly triangular-lanceolate, pallid.
Lateral shoots up to 15 cm long, narrowly 2-winged, the older ones often co-axillary with secondary shoots.
Fruit 1.8 × 2.8 mm, depressed 3-lobed to subglobose, smooth, olivaceous, enclosed by the persistent sepals.
Short shoots sometimes developing.
Lead shoots angular.
