Plants perennial, forming loose to dense mats or clumps, taprooted, with short, prostrate sterile shoots, rarely rhizomatous. Stems: flowering stems usually erect, 10–25 cm, glabrous to sparsely pubescent proximally, more densely so in mid and distal stem, hairs patent to slightly deflexed, multicellular, glandular and eglandular; internodes usually equaling or exceeding leaves; nonflowering shoots present; small axillary tufts of leaves absent. Leaves: sessile (flowering shoots) or petiolate (proximal stems and nonflowering shoots); flowering shoots with blade lanceolate, 5–20 × 2–5 mm, not succulent, apex ± acute, pubescent; proximal stem and nonflowering shoots with blade oblanceolate often spatulate, not succulent, apex obtuse, ± pubescent on both surfaces (rarely subglabrous), with straight, strigose hairs or cilia, hairs pale, fuscous, mostly eglandular. Inflorescences open, dichotomous, (1–)3–10-flowered cymes; bracts lanceolate, distal with scarious margins, proximal herbaceous and foliaceous, pubescence glandular and eglandular. Pedicels erect, angled at base of calyx in fruit, 8–55 mm, 1–5 times as long as capsule, densely pubescent with patent glandular and eglandular hairs. Flowers: sepals lanceolate to lance-elliptic, 3–7 mm, margins broad, apex ± acute, densely glandular-pubescent; petals broadly oblanceolate, 6–12 mm, ± equaling (rarely to 2 times as long as) sepals, apex deeply 2-fid; stamens 10; styles 5. Capsules cylindric, curved, 8–12 mm, ca. 2 times sepals, rarely shorter; teeth 10, erect, margins convolute. Seeds pale to dark brown, 0.7–1.1 mm, tuberculate; testa not inflated, tightly enclosing seed. 2n = 72.
