Rounded perennial c. 50 cm high, usually dioecious. Branches closely woolly. Leaves opposite or subopposite, suborbicular (when short) to semiterete, 5–15 mm long, thick and fleshy with a broad sessile base, shortly appressed-villous, the hairs slightly scabridulous. Flowers solitary. Perianth sparsely pilose. Male flower: stamens 5; pistillode with stigmas slender and long-exserted. Female flower: stamens absent; pistil with stigmas slender and long-exserted. Fruiting perianth thin and weakly crustaceous, straw-coloured; tube oblong, c. 3 mm long and 2 mm wide, very compressed dorsiventrally, glabrous, curving upwards, expanded into a broad spongy hollow base c. 3 mm diam.; limb shortly pubescent, erect, forming a short crest; spines 2, lateral, parallel and erect, to 1 mm long, sometimes with a small radicular spine adjacent to one of the lateral, or spines absent. Seed and radicle erect.
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