Phyllopodium anomalum Hilliard

Annual herb 35-250 mm tall, stem simple to branched from the base and higher, branches mostly erect or ascending, occasionally decumbent, branches, leaves and bracts all minutely glandular-puberulous, thinly pilose as well with patent eglandular hairs mostly 1-1.5 mm long, leafy. Leaves opposite below becoming alternate upwards and passing imperceptibly into floral bracts, blade of lowermost few pairs c. 5-13 x 2-6 mm, ovate to elliptic tapering to a petiolar part 2-7 mm long, smaller upwards, margins distinctly to obscurely serrate or subentire to entire, both surfaces pubescent, hairs up to 1.25-1.5 mm long, minutely glandular as well, particularly on petiolar part. Flowers many in more or less leafy racemes, upper flowers crowded, lower distant. Bracts c. 4-12 x 0.6-3.5 mm, lower ones leaf-like becoming spathulate to linear upwards, adnate to pedicel and lower half of calyx tube, indumentum as on leaves, marginal hairs in particular up to 1.5 mm long. Pedicels of lowermost flowers c. 0.5-0.75 mm long, shorter upwards. Calyx obscurely bilabiate, tube 1.5-2.75 mm long, anticous lobes 0.5-0.75 x 0.3-0.75 mm, glandular-puberulous and with long patent eglandular hairs as well. Corolla tube c. 2.5-4 x 0.75 mm, minutely glandular-puberulous outside in upper part, limb c. 1.3-2 mm across the anticous lobes, posticous lobes c. 0.3-0.5 x 0.2-0.4 mm, anticous lobe c. 0.6-0.8 x 0.2-0.5 mm, all lobes white. Stamens 2 only (the anticous pair), anthers c. 0.2 mm long, appearing in the mouth of the tube. Stigma curled round the anthers. Capsules 3-4 x 1.25-2 mm Seeds 0.4-0.75 x 0.3-0.5 mm, colliculate, testa mauveish-grey, endosperm amber-coloured, showing through the thin testa.