An asperulous to subglabrous erect annual herb commonly up to 45 cm tall, rarely taller, monoecious.Lead shoots angular, straw coloured; lateral shoots up to 10 cm long, commonly much less.Scale leaves 1 mm long, linear-subulate; stipules 0.8–1 mm long, triangular-lanceolate.Foliage leaves distichous; petioles 0.5 mm long; stipules 1 mm long, linear-lanceolate, whitish with a brownish midrib.Leaf blades 0.5–1.3 × 0.15–0.5 cm, elliptic-oblong, obtuse or rounded at the apex, cuneate to rounded at the base, membranaceous, glabrous, dark green above, paler and somewhat greyish-green beneath; lateral nerves in 4–7 pairs, scarcely visible above, slightly prominent beneath.Male flowers in few-flowered cymules in the axils of the lowest quarter of the lateral shoots, females solitary in the rest, with occasionally the transitional axil bisexual.Male flowers: pedicels 0.5 mm long, capillary; sepals 6, 0.7 × 0.5 mm, obovate-suborbicular, the 3 outer apiculate, the inner obtuse, translucent with an opaque greenish-yellow midrib; disk glands 6, free, 0.1 mm across, flattened, lobulate and tuberculate; stamens 3, filaments connate into a column 0.25 mm high, anthers 0.2 mm across, reniform, obliquely held, apically dehiscent.Female flowers: pedicels 0.5 mm long, extending to 1 mm in fruit; sepals 6, 1 × 0.5 mm, not or scarcely accrescent, the outer oblong-lanceolate, the inner oblong to oblanceolate, obtuse to rounded, white with an olive-green midrib; disk 0.6 mm across, very irregularly laciniate or divided; ovary 0.5 mm in diameter, subsessile, 3-lobed to subglobose, smooth, greenish; styles 3, 0.25 mm long, divergent, shortly bifid, stigmas recurved.Fruit 1.1–1.2 × 1.6 mm, rounded-3-lobed, smooth, ochreous.Seeds 1 × 0.8 × 0.7 mm, segmentiform, yellowish-brown, with 6–7 longitudinal ridges of close packed darker brown, transversely lineate tubercles on the dorsal facet, and 5–7 concentric ridges on each ventral facet, with innumerable parallel transverse striae between them.
