Small, prostrate, procumbent or erect, annual herb; branches often dichotomous, softly villous with stellate hairs; leaves subsessile or sessile, opposite or falsely whorled, obovate-rotundate, obtuse, apiculate, cuneate at base, sometimes with undulate margins; flowers axillary, sessile or pedicelled, 1-6, fascicled or clustered in cymes; bracts inconspicuous; sepals-5, acute, usually with many, white, stellate hairs outside, often densely woolly; persistent petals absent; stamens usually 10, staminodes absent or very small; ovary ovoid or subglobose, 3-5 celled, style 3-5, linear, erect, spreading or recurved, persistent; stigma 5-lobed, oblong; capsules ovoid, dehiscent, 3-5 valved, membranous sheathed by the persistent sepals; seeds many, small, tuberculate, brown or black, with a shining membranous appendage, as a small, white, scale, extending into long filiform bristle like process which curls half round the seed.