Herb or suffrutex, to 1 m tall; stems hollow, with both fine stellate trichomes and simple, red, gland-tipped trichomes. Leaves simple, hispidulous; stipules linear; blades +/- lanceolate-ovate, acute, +/- rounded at base, to 3 (4.5) cm long and 2 (2.5) cm wide, serrate-crenate. Glomerules axillary, subsessile; bracts subtending flowers prominent, linear, to 5 mm long; calyx persistent, ca 2 mm long, with 5 acute lobes; petals 5, pinkish; +/- obovate, ca 2 (3.4) mm long, slender at base; stamens 5, united into tube at base, equaling styles; styles 5, free to the base; ovary sericeous. Capsules subglobose, to 3 mm diam, ca 2 mm high, hispidulous, splitting into 4 or 5 cocci, each coccus eventually splitting into 2 valves; seeds 1 or 2 per coccus, shaped like orange wedges, ca 1.5 mm long, black, the surface weakly ribbed. Croat 7458. Fruit dispersal method is uncertain. Seeds are perhaps thrown to some extent when capsules open. They are neither viscid nor armed. Costa Rica to the Guianas; Cuba; tropical Africa. In Panama, known from tropical moist forest in the Canal Zone, Colón and Panama, from tropical dry forest in Coclé, and from premontane moist forest in Panama.