Usually 30-50 cm high, dense, with glabrous branchlets. Leaves mostly 1.5-1.75 mm long, erect-spreading, ovate-lanceolate, subacute, ustulate-mucronate, with a wide appressed base, slightly convex above, keeled beneath, glabrous. Flowers sessile. Involucral leaves 3-5 mm long, ovate-lanceolate, acute, grading into the upper leaves. Calyx-tube longitudinally sulcate, glabrous: calyx-lobes 6-7 mm long, imbricate, erect, oblong-lanceolate, acute, rounded and scabridous on the dorsal surface, red-brown. Petals usually 1.6-1.7 cm long, consisting of a linear reddish claw considerably thickened up the middle and widening into an ovate or elliptic-ovate, acute, white lamina about 5 mm long. Anthers 2-2.75 mm long, obtuse, reaching to the middle of the lamina. Ovary surmounted by a disc with an elevated margin, bilocular, with 4 or 5 pendulous ovules in each chamber: stylar column reaching to the upper half of the lamina: stigmas 2, scarcely distinct. Fruit about 2-5 mm long, articulated on a stipe, cylindric, sulcate.
Home