Plants perennial, glabrous, with vertical rootstock, occasionally with short-creeping rhizomes. Stems ascending or erect, usually producing axillary shoots below 1st-order inflorescence or at proximal nodes, (30-)40-100 cm. Leaf blades light or yellowish green, veins scarcely prominent abaxially, linear-lanceolate, 6-17 × 1-4(-5) cm, usually ca. 5-6 times as long as wide, widest near middle, thin, not coriaceous, base cuneate, margins entire, flat or undulate, apex acute. Inflorescences terminal and axillary, terminal usually occupying distal 5-3 of stem, rather dense or interrupted in proximal 1/2, broadly to narrowly paniculate (branches usually with 2d-order branches, rarely simple). Pedicels articulated in proximal 1/ 3 or almost near base, filiform (but slightly thickened distally), 4-8 mm, usually ca. 1.5 times as long as inner tepals, articulation indistinctly swollen. Flowers 10-25 in whorls; inner tepals broadly triangular, (2-)2.5-3.5(-3.8) × (2-)2.5-3(-3.5) mm, base truncate or rounded, margins entire or indistinctly erose only near base, apex acute, occasionally subobtuse-triangular; tubercles usually 3, (1 in some forms, then large, occupying at least 0.5 width of inner tepal), equal or subequal, much narrower than inner tepals glabrous or minutely verrucose. Achenes brown or dark reddish brown, 1.7-2.2 × 1-1.5 mm. 2n = 20.
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A robust herb that keeps growing from year to year. The stems are branched. The leaves are only slightly wavy at the edge. They taper to the base of the leaf. The seed valves have a sword shaped bump.
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