Ross' Sandwort

Description

Plants perennial, densely pulvinate to loosely cespitose. Taproots stout, woody. Stems ascending to spreading, green or often purple, 1-3 cm, glabrous, internodes of flowering stems 0.2-1 times as long as leaves. Leaves overlapping, - tightly (vegetative), - evenly spaced proximally (cauline), connate-perfoliate proximally, with tight, herbaceous sheath 0.2-0.3 mm; blade upwardly curved, green or often purple, keeled, prominently 1-veined abaxially, subulate, 3-angled, 1-4 - 0.5-0.7 mm, flexuous, margins rounded, herbaceous, smooth, apex green to purple, rounded, navicular, shiny, glabrous; axillary leaves well developed. Inflorescences solitary flowers, axillary or terminal (rarely present); bracts absent. Pedicels 0.1-2 cm, glabrous. Flowers: hypanthium disc-shaped; sepals 1-veined, oblong-ovate (herbaceous portion usually purple, oblong-ovate), 1.5-2.5 mm, not enlarging in fruit, apex often purple, obtuse to acuminate, navicular, not hooded, glabrous; petals obovate to spatulate, 1.5-2 times as long as sepals, apex obtuse, entire. Capsules on stipe ca. 0.1-0.2 mm, spheric, 1.5-2.5 mm, equaling sepals. Seeds brown, suborbic-ulate, compression unknown, ca. 0.6 mm, obscurely reticulate. 2n = 58 (Russia), 60.