Description:
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A much branched monoecious annual or perennial herb or subshrub up to 60 cm tall. Lead shoots slightly rough. Lateral shoots 2-7 cm long, densely scabrid-papillose. Scale leaves 1 mm long, subulate. Foliage leaves distichous; petioles 0.5-0.75 mm long; stipules 1.5-2 mm long, linear-lanceolate; leaf blade 3-14 x 2-6 mm, elliptic, obtuse or subacute at apex and rounded-cuneate to slightly asymmetric at base, margins slightly thickened. Male flowers in few flowered cymules in the axils of the loweest half to three quarters of the lead shoot; pedicels 0.5 mm long; sepals 5, 1.5 x 1 mm, obovate-spathulate to rounded, white with a faint midrib; stamens 3, filaments united into a column 1-1.5 mm high. Female flowers solitary in the axils of the upper half to quarter of the lead shoot; pedicels 1 mm long extending to 2-3 mm in fruit and expanded apically; sepals 5, 2 x 1 mm, enlarging to 4 x 2-3 mm in fruit, ovate or elliptic, pale green with a white border; ovary stipitate, 6-lobed, smooth; styles 3, 0.6 mm long, ± free, divergent, bifid, the stigmas recurved. Fruit 2.5 x 4 mm, depressed-globose, ± smooth, enclosed by the persistent sepals. Seeds 1.8-1.9 x 1.5 x 1.4 mm, segmentiform, dark brown and with c. 17 longitudinal ridges on the dorsal facet and c. 12-14 concentric ridges on each ventral facet. |