sect. Olympia (Spach) Nyman

Dwarf shrubs or suffrutices (or wiry perennial herbs?) up to 0.55 m tall, glabrous, glaucous, with stems erect to decumbent or sometimes prostrate from taproot or short rhizome, branching from upper and sometimes intermediate nodes and basal, rarely rooting, with dark (black) glands on anthers and sometimes on leaves, sepals and/or petals. Stems persistently 2-lined, eglandular. Leaves opposite, decussate, sessile, free, persistent, coriaceous to chartaceous; lamina entire with venation pinnate to 1-nerved, usually obscure; laminar glands pale, punctiform, sometimes with one or two dark; intramarginal glands pale and sometimes also black (usually irregular); ventral glands absent. Inflorescence 1–c. 24-flowered, with branching dichasial-monochasial from 1–5 nodes, without or with up to 3 subsidiary branches; buds erect. Flowers stellate, homostylous. Sepals 5, free, imbricate, persistent, erect in fruit, with margin entire to rarely subundulate-crenate; veins 7–c. 15; laminar glands pale, linear to striiform and sometimes black; marginal or intramarginal glands absent or black. Petals 5, persistent, erect but not or loosely twisting after flowering, with apiculus lateral, small or obscure; margin entire; laminar glands pale, linear to punctiform, and sometimes black, distal; marginal glands few, black or absent. Stamen fascicles ‘3’ (i.e. united 2 +2 +1), persistent, with stamens totalling 60–c. 140; filaments basally united; anther gland black; pollen type X. Ovary with 3 axile placentae, each ∞-ovulate; styles 3, divergent from discrete bases; stigma narrowly capitate. Capsule 3-valved, coriaceous, with valves smooth, without swollen vittae. Seeds cylindric, not or scarcely carinate, not appendiculate; testa shallowly foveolate-scalariform.