Annual herb (or probably short-lived perennial in undisturbed ground), erect, mostly 0.5–1.6 m. Stem wiry and tough, strongly striate with pale ridges, smooth and glabrous throughout or more commonly with whitish multicellular hairs about the somewhat swollen nodes, rarely slightly scabrid on the ridges below the nodes, much-branched and bushy from near the base upwards, the branches divaricate-ascending and frequently with sterile, axillary short shoots. Leaves linear to linear-filiform, 1.5–9.5 cm. × 0.5–3 (4) mm., glabrous to sparingly pilose (especially when young), occasionally slightly scabrid on the pale and prominent lower surface of the midrib and on the revolute margins, sessile, sharply mucronate at the apex. Inflorescence carmine to pink or whitish, spiciform, 1.2–4 × 0.6–1 cm. in flower, rounded or conical at the apex, elongating in fruit to as much as 20 cm.; axis very densely white-lanate, strongly furrowed but not becoming honeycombed with pits after fruit-fall, densely clad with the persistent bracts. Bracts 1.25–1.5 mm. long, lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate, membranous with a dark brown, shortly excurrent midrib, glabrous or more commonly basally pilose and sparingly ciliate. Bracteoles deltoid-ovate, 1.25–1.75 mm. long, membranous with a distinctly excurrent brownish or red midrib, glabrous or sparingly pilose. Flowers solitary in the axils of the bracts. Tepals 2.5–3(4) mm. long, oblong; outer 2 at anthesis firm centrally with a slender, slightly excurrent midrib and 2 pairs of slender lateral nerves (these often branching above), glabrous, increasingly hyaline-margined upwards with the margins inflexed; inner 3 similar but slightly less firm, at least the innermost usually with only one pair of lateral nerves. Tepals slightly indurate and the outer especially somewhat more prominently 3-nerved in fruit, but never strongly ribbed as in that stage with C. kirkii, nor with the inflorescence appearing spiky. Filaments very slender, 1.5–3 mm. long, the pseudostaminodes finally c. three quarters the length of the filaments, oblong, fimbriate around the apex. Ovary ellipsoid with a dense beard of hairs around the middle, glabrous below and more thinly hairy above. Style slender, 1.25–2 mm. long, not asymmetrically placed on the ripe capsule, glabrous. Capsule 2.25–2.5 mm. long, pyriform, compressed. Seed compressed-ovoid, brown, 2–2.25 mm. long, shining, finely reticulate.
