a bush, 2–3 ft. high, leafless and spineless, with the young branches succulent and the older with a succulent bark, glabrous, green, apparently not glaucous, unisexual; branches opposite, diverging from each other at an angle of 50°–60°, straight, 1–2 lin. thick, with internodes 3/4–1 1/4 in. long, all attaining to the same general level or the lower overtopping the main and upper branches, not asperate nor papillate; leaves rudimentary and soon deciduous, opposite, recurved-spreading, 1–1 1/3 lin. long, 1/3 lin. broad and nearly as thick, narrowly lanceolate or elliptic, acute or obtuse, apiculate, narrowed into a short petiole at the base, glabrous, minutely ciliate on the margins of the petiole; male involucres solitary and terminal and also in small terminal and lateral cymes, with a pair of leaf-like bracts at their base, sessile or subsessile, 1 1/2 lin. in diam. and 1 lin. deep, cup-shaped, puberulous outside and pubescent with much longer hairs within, with 5 glands and 5 rectangular ciliate lobes; glands rather distant, 1/4– 1/2 lin. in their greater diam., transversely oblong or elliptic-oblong, entire, with the inner margin turned up and a slight depression in front of it; female plant not seen. null
