Perennial mat-forming forb with numerous stems from a thick root.
Numerous stems are flat to the ground, hairy, greenish to reddish in color, and form dense, spreading mats. Tiny flowers are in dense, in mounded, poorly defined clusters.
Habitat
Found on dry soil in disturbed areas.
Flower Characteristics
Dense kidney-shaped structures at base of flower; flower bracts (sepals) about 1/16 inch, lobes bent backward, erect in age, tip sharp to rounded, mid-vein ending before tip; filament tube <1/16 inch. Flowers in dense sessile clusters in leaf axils.
Leaf and Stem Characteristics
Basal leaves in rosettes, often deciduous; stem leaves are oval to round, woolly beneath, smooth or sparsely silky above, 1/8 to 3/4 inch long and sharp to blunt at their tips.
Fruit and Seed Characteristics
Fruit is small, bladder-like and thin-walled fruit (utricle), does not split open at maturity.
Lens-shape to spherical, smooth, <1/16 inch, red-brown.