Annual herb, to 50 cm tall, usually branched many times; stems densely and minutely stalked-glandular. Leaves short-petiolate; blades mostly linear-lanceolate, acute, to 3.2 cm long and 3.5 mm wide; vein 1. Racemes long, slender, terminal or upper-axillary, 3-7 mm long; flowers red-violet, pedicellate, 2-2.5 mm long; sepals 5, the outer 3 minute, green or tinged with white or red-violet, the inner 2 equaling petals, red-violet, oblong, rounded at apex; petals 3, the upper 2 white, +/- connate laterally and enfolding the lower petal, the lower petal keel-shaped, crested, enclosing stamens and style, the crest 6-10-lobed, the lobes often tinged with red-violet; stamens 8, arranged in a fan-shaped pattern within the lower petal; filaments connate nearly to apex; ovary obovoid to orbicular, 0.6-0.8 mm long; style curved, flattened, recessed among stamens; stigmas 2, widely spaced, on either end of the staminal cluster. Capsules +/- oblong, 1.8-2.6 mm long, 2-valued; seeds oblong, to 1.8 mm long, black, densely erect-pubescent, arillate at base, the aril slender, bilobed, more than one-third as long as seed. Croat 11988. Seasonally frequent in clearings. Flowers and fruits principally in the rainy season. Pantropic weed. Throughout Panama in weedy situations in tropical dry, tropical moist, tropical wet, and premontane wet forests; known from the Canal Zone, Bocas del Toro, Colón, San Blas, Chiriqui, Herrera, Coclé, Panama, and Darién.