Annual with a slender persistent taproot and numerous thin adventitious roots. Leaves all basal, in a rosette, ascending or spreading, narrow-elliptic, 4–10 cm long, 0.8–2.5 cm wide, pubescent on both surfaces, margins + obtusely and irregularly toothed and sometimes with a tuft of long hairs on the margins of the teeth; narrowing into a densely pubescent indistinct petiole that broadens at the base and covers an axillary tuft of whitish-yellow hairs. Scapes to 30 cm long, longer than the leaves, pubescent with white antrorse-appressed hairs. Spikes with flowers somewhat separated (0.5–)5–10 cm long. Bracts elliptic to ovate, 1.5–2 mm long, c. 1 mm wide, ciliate with a glabrous or slightly pubescent obtuse carina c ½ of the width. Sepals subequal, elliptic, 1.8–2 mm long, the anterior sepals obtuse but the posterior ones acute; all with a glabrous or slightly pubescent carina 1/4 to 1/3 of the width. Corolla: tube 1.5–2 mm long; lobes ovate to orbicular, 0.6–1.8 mm long, acute, with an indistinct midvein. Style 3.5 mm long. Ovary bilocular, one loculus with 2 ovules and the other with 3, the apical ovule separated in a false loculus by a swelling of the placenta. Capsule ovoid, 3–3.4 mm long, 1.7–2 mm diam., with a truncate cylindrical beak usually 4-lobed at the apex. Seeds to 5 in number, reddish-brown to golden-brown; lower seeds elliptic, biconvex, 1.2–1.8 mm long; apical seed smaller, irregular, contained in the ovary beak.
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