Perennial, tall, erect, succulent, glabrous herb with purple blotches on stem; leaves opposite, simple, fleshy, green with purple margins, elliptic-ovate, crenate, obtuse, base rounded; flowers in dense terminal, corymbose panicles; flowers red, small, about 1 cm across, shortly pedicelled, actinomorphic, bisexual; calyx 4-lobed, cleft half way down; corolla clawed with spreading limbs, twice as long as the calyx; stamen 8 in two series, adnate to petals; carpels 4, apocarpous, adnate to the base of corolla tube, ovules many; follicles-4; seeds many, oblong, ellipsoidal with longitudinal ribs on its back.