Plants annual; taproot filiform to slender. Stems erect or ascending, often basally branched, 3-20(-38) cm, retrorsely pubescent through-out. Leaves: stipules lanceolate, 1-3 mm, apex acuminate, entire; blade elliptic to oblong, 3-7 × 1.5-3.5 mm, granulose, leathery, apex shortly mucronate, glabrous. Cymes axillary, 3-12-flowered, subsessile, congested, in clusters 3-5 mm wide. Flowers 5-merous, short-campanulate, with prominent hypanthial bulge and calyx somewhat flaring distally, 2-2.5 mm, moderately pubescent with hooked hairs proximally; sepals red-brown, often finely striped or mottled, white distally, veins absent, obovate to oblong, 0.7-1 mm, leathery to rigid, margins white, 0.1-0.2 mm wide, papery to scarious, apex terminated by awn, hood prominent, broadly rounded, awn widely divergent, 0.6-0.9 mm, conic in proximal 3 with yellow, ± scabrous spine; staminodes filiform, 0.5-0.6 mm; style 1, split in distal 1/ 5, 0.4-0.5 mm. Utricles ± globose, 0.8-0.9 mm, minutely papillose distally. 2n = 10, 14, 24, 28 (all Europe).

Flowering spring. Disturbed clay soil; 20-30 m; introduced; Calif.; s Europe; w Asia; nw Africa.

Variety echinulata is the only Paronychia introduced to North America from the Old World and is known from a single collection in Stanislaus County (P. Allen, in 1968, UC).