Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Glabrous, low perennial herbs from a woody taproot.

Stems: Stems several to numerous, prostrate and often rooting at the nodes, 0.1–0.35 m long, many branched.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades orbicular to oblong, 3–8 mm long, 2–7 mm wide. Apex rounded, occasionally emarginate or apiculate. Surfaces glabrous. Margins entire. Petioles 0.5–1.2 mm long. Stipules on both sides of the stem connate into a white, membranous, deltate to lanceolate scale 1–2 mm long, margins entire to lacerate.

Flowers: Flowers in cyathia solitary at the nodes and in the forks; staminate flowers 15–30 per cyathium. involucre turbinate, ca. 1 mm high, glands 4, shallowly cupped, oblong, 0.5–1 mm long, appendages of the glands usually conspicuous, white, 1–3 times as long as the gland is wide. Flowers unisexual and highly reduced. Pistillate flowers solitary, on a gynophore; staminate flowers in 5 groups or cymules, each with 1 to several flowers. Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla (petals) absent. Male flower reduced to a single stamen, with an articulation at junction of pedicel and filament, subtended by slender bracteoles. Ovary superior, 3-carpellate; ovules 1 per cell, anatropous.

Fruit: Capsules ovoid; 3–angled; 1.3–2 mm long. Seeds pale brown with a white coat; 4–angled; 1.2–1.7 mm long; the faces smooth or minutely puncticulate in transverse lines.

Ploidy: 2n = 36; 48

Habitat: Coastal areas.

Elevation Range: