Perennial herb with numerous rigidly erect stems from the base, 0.2–1.3 (2) m. tall. Stems wiry and tough, strongly striate with pale ridges, smooth and glabrous throughout or scabrid below the nodes, simple or sparingly branched with long, ascending branches. Leaves narrowly linear to narrowly elliptic, 2.5–8.5 × 0.6–1.3 cm., glabrous or slightly puberulent when young, entirely smooth or scabrid along the prominent lower surface of the midrib and the revolute margins, attenuate both above and below, apex sharply mucronate. Inflorescence greenish-white or creamy to deep carmine-red, condensed, repeatedly branched and cymose-fastigiate, forming a more or less round-topped head up to 7 cm. across but often less; shorter upper branches more or less white-lanate, sulcate, after fruit-fall densely clad with the patent, persistent bracts. Bracts ovate-lanceolate, c.2 mm. long, membranous, mucronate with the shortly excurrent yellowish or reddish midrib, glabrous or very sparingly whitish-pilose. Bracteoles similar to the bracts. Flowers solitary in the axils of the bracts. Tepals 4–5.5 mm. long, oblong; outer 2 at anthesis firm centrally with a rather obscure slightly excurrent midrib and 2 faint lateral nerves, more or less white-pilose below, increasingly broadly hyaline-margined and delicate above with the margins inflexed; inner 3 increasingly shorter, narrower and more broadly hyaline-margined, the margins of the innermost wider than the narrow, firm centre. Tepals indurate at the base in fruit, slightly or markedly more prominently nerved. Filaments very slender, c. 5–6 mm. long, the pseudostaminodes c. 1–2.5 mm. long, oblong, fimbriate around the apex. Ovary ellipsoid, pilose in most of the upper part with the hairs sometimes ascending the base of the style at least on one side. Style slender, c. 3.5–4 mm. long, symmetrically placed. Capsule ovoid-ellipsoid, 2–2.5 mm. long. Seed ovoid, pyriform, shining brown, feebly reticulate, c. 2 mm. long.
