Mollugo verticillata L., carpetweed, Indian chickweed. Annual, taprooted, early–rosetted, several–stemmed at base, with procumbent principal branches, < 10 cm tall; shoots with a short–lived whorl of basal leaves and whorls of thin cauline leaves, glabrous.
Stems cylindric, slender with conspicuous pulvinus at base of each branch, internodes 20—35 mm long.
Leaves whorled, mostly 3—5(—7) per node, simple, sessile (rosette leaves short–petiolate), lacking obvious stipules; petiole indistinct from blade, to 4 mm long; blade oblanceolate or narrowly obovate to linear or narrowly elliptic, to 25 × 1.5—6.5 mm, long–tapered at base, entire, acute at tip, obscurely pinnately veined with midrib sunken on upper surface and raised on lower surface.
Inflorescence appearing whorled (verticillate) in fruit but initially of 3—6 helically alternate, pedicellate flowers (obscurely axillary), at each node having 1 continuing shoot with an inflorescence at first node + axillary verticil of flowers of different ages and sizes; bract subtending inflorescence and bractlet subtending pedicels but not clearly assignable to a given flower, bract ca. 1 mm long and bractlets 0.5—1 mm long, membranous with green midvein, sparsely minutely ciliate; pedicel slender, at anthesis 4—5 mm long increasing some in fruit, green, with inconspicuous glandular hairs having minute, yellowish heads.
Flower bisexual, radial, ca. 3 mm across; sepals 5, oblong and obtuse at tip, at anthesis ca. 1.5 × 0.9 mm increasing in fruit, having membranous margins and tip and 3 raised, green veins, the midvein branched above midpoint and fusing with lateral veins but midvein not penetrating membranous tip; petals absent; stamens 3, fused in whorl by a short cylinder, stamens opposite furrows of ovary; filaments flattened, 1.5 mm long, white; anthers dorsifixed (essentially versatile), dithecal, 0.5 mm long, white, longitudinally dehiscent; pollen white; pistil 1; ovary superior, 2—3 mm long, green, with swelling at base and fine–ribbed on each valve, 3–chambered, each chamber with 10+ ovules; styles 3, ascending, ca. 0.35 mm long, white, stigmatic tips conspicuously papillate.
Fruit capsule, loculicidal, 3–valved, to 35–seeded, conspicuously 3–lobed, 1.5—3 × 1.2—1.6 mm, valves thin and papery and with bulging seeds embossed with ridges of seeds; beaks (styles) persistent within depression at top.
Seed ± kidney–shaped, ca. 0.6 × 0.5 × 0.3 mm, glossy red–brown, in range mostly with 5 ribs curved along back of seed and having thin areas textured with cell outlines, with a short post at funiculus.
A. C. Gibson