Annual or perennial, prostrate or erect, c. 25 cm tall, succulent, glabrous, green or purplish green herb. Branches and stem with 3-20 mm rarely up to 50 mm long internodes. Leaves alternate or subopposite, closely crowded below the flowers, spathulate or obovate-oblong to linear-oblong, attenuate at the base, sub-sessile, obtuse or truncate, 3-25 mm long, 1.5-8 mm broad, thick, fleshy, glabrous, glistening white below, green or purplish-green above; stipular appendages usually absent, or rarely every minute and setaceous. Inflorescence usually in the forks of branches, cymose, with clusters of 3-6 flowers subtended by 4-leaved involucre, rarely flowers solitary and terminal. Flowers sessile, yellow, 5-8 mm across, bracteate; bracts membranous, ovate, c. 3 mm long, acuminate, white or somewhat purplish. Sepals subequal, basally united into a short, 2-3 mm long tube, keeled; lobes 2-3 mm long, slightly hooded, margin broad membranous, acute, deciduous. Petals 5, deliquescent, slightly united at the base, obovate, 5-6 mm long, 2.5-3 mm wide, yellow, emarginate with mucronulate notch. Stamens 7-12, basally somewhat united and adnate to petals, filaments c. 2.5 mm long, sensitive to touch, anthers ovoid. Ovary c. 2 mm long, half embedded in calyx tube, ovoid; style 1.5-2 mm long, stigmas 4-5, sticky, c. 1 mm long. Capsule many-seeded, 6-8 mm long, 3-4 mm in diam. Seeds shining black, c. 0.5-0.8 mm, reniform, testa tuberculate.