Plants perennial, coarse, rhi-zomatous; rhizomes slender, elongate. Stems decumbent or ascending, straggling, diffusely branched, smoothly 4-angled, 20–90 cm, brittle, glabrous. Leaves sessile; blade linear-lanceolate to narrowly lanceolate, widest near base, 1.5–4 cm × 1–6 mm, base round, margins smooth, apex acute, often ciliate near base, otherwise glabrous, not glaucous. Inflorescences terminal, 5–many-flowered, open, conspicuously branched cymes; bracts narrowly lanceolate, 1–5 mm, wholly scarious, margins ciliate, apex acuminate. Pedicels divaricate, 10–30 mm, glabrous. Flowers 5–12 mm diam., rarely larger; sepals 5, distinctly 3-veined, narrowly lanceolate to triangular, 3–7 mm, margins narrow, straight, scarious, apex acute, glabrous; petals 5, 3–7 mm, equaling or longer than sepals; stamens 10, all, some, or none fully developed and fertile; styles 3, ascending, ca. 3 mm. Capsules green or straw colored, narrowly ovoid, 5–7 mm, longer than sepals, apex acute, opening by 3 valves, splitting into 6; carpophore absent. Seeds reddish brown, reniform-rotund, ca. 1 mm diam., rugose in concentric rings. 2n = 39, 52.