Phyllanthus loandensis Welw. ex Müll.Arg.

An erect, much-branched annual or perennial herb, subshrub or shrub up to 90 cm tall, monoecious or dioecious; stems and branches strict, tough wiry. Lead shoots and lateral shoots smooth, angular, glabrous. Lateral shoots 1-7(10) cm long, divaricate, usually subtended by foliage leaves on the young lead shoots, but densely fasciculate on the short shoots of older plants, subtended by scale leaves. Scale leaves 2 mm long, subulate; stipules 2 x 1 mm, triangular-lanceolate, dark purplish-brown. Foliage leaves of the lateral shoots strongly distichous; petioles c. 0.3 mm long; stipules 0.5-1 mm long, subulate-filiform to narrowly linear-lanceolate, reddish-purple with white margins; blades 2-7 x 1-4 mm, elliptic, acute or subacute, often mucronulate, cuneate to rounded at the base, chartaceous, glabrous above and beneath, light green above, paler beneath; lateral nerves in 2-6 pairs, usually scarcely visible, looped within the margin. Male flowers in 1-3-flowered cymules in the median axils of the lateral shoots, female flowers solitary in the distal axils, sometimes with a bisexual cymule in between. Male flowers: pedicels 1.5 mm long, capillary; sepals 5, 1.2 x 0.8 mm, obovate, greenish or whitish with a red midrib; disk glands 5, 0.25 mm across, free, transversely ovate, thin, flat, smooth, ± truncate; stamens (4)5, free, filaments c. 0.75-1 mm long, erect, anthers 0.2 mm across, inclined, obliquely dehiscent, yellow. Female flowers: pedicels 1 mm long, slender, extending to 2 mm in fruit, smooth, glabrous; sepals 5, 1-1.3 x 0.5-0.8 mm, ovate-lanceolate to lanceolate, pinkish-white with a pinkish-green midrib; disk 0.5 mm in diameter, annular, thin, undulate; ovary 0.7 mm in diameter, sessile, globose, smooth, green; styles 3, 0.5 mm long, united at the base, ± erect, bifid, stigmas recurved. Fruit 1.5 x 2.5 mm, depressed 3-lobed, smooth, glaucous-green, olive-green when dried. Seeds 1.3 x 1 x 1 mm, segmentiform, reddish-brown, with c. 20 rows of minute tubercles on the dorsal facet, and c. 17 concentric arcs on each ventral facet.