House'S Stitchwort

Description

Plants perennial, cespitose or mat-forming. Taproots occasionally filiform or often woody, somewhat thickened to moderately stout. Stems erect to procumbent, green, 2-15 cm, glabrous, internodes of all stems 0.3-1(-2) times as long as leaves. Leaves moderately to tightly overlapping (proximal cauline), variably spaced, progressively more so distally (distal cauline), connate proximally, with loose, scarious sheath 0.3-0.8 mm; blade straight to slightly outcurved, green, flat, to 3-angled distally, 1-3-veined, midvein more prominent than 2 lateral veins, subulate to linear, 5-10 - 0.5-1.2 mm, flexuous, margins not thickened, scarious, smooth, apex green, rounded, thickened and navicular, shiny, glabrous; axillary leaves present among proximal cauline leaves. Inflorescences solitary flowers, terminal, or 2-5(-8)-flowered, open cymes; bracts broadly subulate, herbaceous or scarious-margined proximally. Pedicles 0.2-1.5 cm, glabrous. Flowers: hypanthium disc-shaped; sepals strongly 3-veined, ovate to lanceolate (herbaceous portion lanceolate), 3.5-5 mm, to 5.5 mm in fruit, apex green or purple in part, sharply acute to acuminate, not hooded, glabrous; petals oblong to obovate, 0.7-1.8 times as long as sepals, apex rounded to blunt, entire. Capsules on stipe ca. 0.2 mm, broadly ovoid, 3-3.8 mm, shorter than sepals. Seeds black, suborbiculate with radicle prolonged to rounded beak, somewhat compressed, 0.7-1 mm, tuberculate; tubercles low, rounded.