erect, 3–5 ft. high; branches virgate, the younger villous, glabrescent, the older with many short lateral, floriferous branchlets; leaves 3-nate, erect-spreading, linear-subulate, acuminate, sulcate, ciliolate, 5–7 lin. long; inflorescence terminal, flowers 1–2 on the short branchlets, mostly in long dense leafy pseudo-racemes, or more rarely somewhat lax and interrupted on longer branchlets, suberect to spreading, subsessile, calycine; bracts closely approximate, ovate to lanceolate, like the sepals glumaceous, 3–4 lin. long; sepals in opposite pairs, the outer pair lanceolate, acute or acuminate, the inner pair more oblong and more obtuse, concave, 7–8 lin. long, much exceeding the corolla; corolla subovate, 4-fid (or at length, being ruptured by the swelling ovary, 4-partite), 1 1/3–1 1/2 lin. long; segments erect, ovate, obtuse, about as long as the tube; stamens 5–6 lin. long, shorter than the sepals, much exceeding the corolla; anthers terminal, longitudinally semilanceolate, acute, smooth, submembranous; cells deeply partite, about 3/4 lin. long; pore nearly as long as the cell; style subexserted, hooked; stigma capitate; ovary glabrous; seeds broadly margined. null
