Description:
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A slender erect annual herb up to c. 30 cm tall, glabrous, monoecious. Lead shoots terete, reddish; lateral shoots few, erect, up to 25 cm long. Scale leaves 0.75 mm long, subulate; stipules 0.75 mm long, triangular-ovate. Foliage leaves distichous, vertically held against the axis; petioles 0.5 mm long; stipules 1 mm long, subulate, brownish. Leaf blades 6–12 × 1–3.5 mm, narrowly elliptic-lanceolate, sharply acute, rounded-cuneate at the base, firmly chartaceous, lateral nerves invisible, dull. Male flowers 1–3 per axil in short multibracteate cymules in the lower half of the lateral shoots, female flower solitary in the upper axils. Female flowers: pedicels 0.5 mm long, extending to 2 mm in fruit; sepals 6, 1.5 × 0.6 mm, accrescent to 2 × 1.2 mm, elliptic-oblong, rounded or obtuse, green with narrow white margins; disk 0.5 mm in diameter, shallowly 6-lobed, very thin, flat, smooth, not readily visible in older flowers; ovary 1 mm in diameter, sessile, 6-lobed, subglobose, smooth; styles 3, ± free, 0.4 mm long, spreading and appressed to the top of the ovary, shortly bifid, stigmas slightly recurved. Male flowers: pedicels 0.3 mm long; sepals 6, 1–1.2 × 0.6–0.8 mm, elliptic-ovate, rounded, dull yellowish-white; disk glands 6, 0.2 mm in diameter, circular, thin, flat, smooth, widely spaced; stamens 3, filaments connate into a stout column 1 mm high, anthers 0.5 × 0.3 mm, free, parallel, ellipsoid, longitudinally dehiscent. Fruit 2.3 × 3–4 mm, depressed-subglobose, smooth, ochreous. Seeds 2 × 1.3 × 1.2 mm, sharply triquetrous-segmentiform, yellowish-brown to dull greyish-brown, often with c. 8–10 longitudinal stripes of darker brown and 15–20 shallow longitudinal ridges on the dorsal facet, and with 8 concentric bands and 15 concentric ridges on each ventral facet, with innumerable transverse striae between them which exfoliate from older seeds. |