Small annual herb up to 45(–70) cm tall, prostrate or decumbent, often strongly branched from the base and usually also above; stem and branches slender to stout, angular, glabrous or thinly furnished with short to long, crisped, multicellular hairs. Leaves arranged spirally, simple, without stipules; petiole 3–5 cm long, sometimes longer than lamina; lamina broadly ovate or rhombic-ovate to narrowly linear-lanceolate, 0.5–5.5 cm × 0.2–3 cm, cuneate to long-attenuate at base, acute to blunt or obscurely retuse at apex, entire, glabrous or with a few short glandular hairs on the lower surface of the venation. Inflorescence an axillary cluster, with male and female flowers intermixed but male flowers most frequent in upper clusters; bracts up to 2 mm long, with short or long awn. Flowers unisexual, subsessile, with 3 tepals up to 2 mm long, having a short awn; male flowers with 3 stamens; female flowers with superior, 1-celled ovary crowned by 3 stigmas. Fruit a globose to shortly ovoid capsule up to 2.5 mm long, with a very short beak below the stigmas, usually strongly wrinkled, usually circumscissile, 1-seeded. Seed compressed, 1–1.5 mm long, faintly reticulate, black. |
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