Japan Flora: Glabrous, monoecious annual often reddish in sunny places; stems erect, 5-30 cm. long, branched, with few ordinary leaves at bases of stems, and scale-leaves on stems subtending the branches, the branchlets ascending- spreading, slighdy flattened, narrowly winged, 5-12 cm. long; leaves on branches obovate-oblong or narrowly oblong, 7-17 mm. long, 3-7 mm. wide, rounded, mucronate, obliquely rounded and subsessile at base, entire, minutely scabrous on margins, whitish beneath; flowers subsessile, about 4 mm. across; sepals 6, oblong; stamens 3, the anthers splitting trans­versely, the filaments connate; capsules depressed-globose, about 2.5 mm. across, pendulous, transversely rugose with raised, red-brown lines, the styles free, minute, bifid; seeds transversely rugose, about 1.2 mm. across. July-Oct. Waste places and fields;

Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu; common. Widely scattered in the Tropics and subtropics.