Erect or spreading, (10-) 20-60 cm tall, much branched, annual herb. Stem and branches purple, pilose. Leaves 3-5-costate, costae hairy to almost glabrous, lanceolate to ovate, 2-9.5 cm long, 1-5 cm broad, oblique or obtuse at the base, serrate, basal serratures prolonged into setaceous appendages or not, glabrous except the hairy to glabrescent costae, acute; petiole 0.5-3(-4) cm long, purple, pilose; stipules setaceous, 5-7 mm long, pilose, purplish green. Cyme antiphyllous, very shortly pedunculate, mostly 2, rarely 3-flowered. Flowers golden yellow, c. 1 cm across, pedicel c. 2 mm long, jointed; bracts akin to stipules, 4-6 mm long, purple. Sepals linear-oblong, c. 4 mm long, hooded and awned at the apex, purple dotted outside, green within, glabrous. Petals obovate, 3.5-5 mm long, c. 3 mm broad, obtuse, hairy at the base. Stamens (12-) 30, filaments c. 3 mm long. Carpels 3; ovary oblong-cylindric, c. 1.5-2 mm long, minutely hairy, 3-loculed, truncate above; style 3-fid, c. 1.5 mm long, stigmas bilobed. Capsules solitary or paired, with 3 fairly stout wings, (10-) 15-25 mm long, c. 4-6 mm in diameter, truncate and terminating in 3, bifid, radiating, 3-7 mm long beaks at apex, 3-loculed, locules transversely septate or aseptate. Seeds blackish-brown, angular, rough, obliquely truncate at both ends.