Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs.

Stems: Stems erect to prostrate and then rooting at the nodes, 2–5 cm long, often many-branched, forming dense tufts.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades spatulate or oblong, 1–6 cm long, 0.5–2 cm wide. Surfaces glabrous to villous, especially in the leaf axils, the hairs multicellular. Usually variously variegated with red, brown, pink, or yellow. Margins undulate. Petioles 10–40 mm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in sessile spikes. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Each flower subtended by a bract and 2 bracteoles. Bract and bracteoles 2–3 mm long, apex acuminate, brown at base. Calyx of 5 sepals, unequal, 3–nerved, the 2 abaxial ones 3–4 mm long, the adaxial one 2.7–3.5 mm long, the 2 inner ones 1.2–2.5 mm long. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 5, 1–2 shorter and sterile. Ovary superior, 2–3(4)-carpellate, the carpels connate to form a compound, 1-celled ovary; ovule placentation basal, free-central, or rarely apical; style 1, often lobed.

Fruit: Utricles not developed in our cultivar. Seeds 1 per fruit; the surface usually lustrous; endosperm essentially absent.

Ploidy: 2n = 28

Habitat:

Elevation Range: