This plant is a low growing annual herb belonging to the Euphorbiaceae family, which flowers about June to September. The leaves are greyish-green and the flower spikes look rather like stumpy grey-green heads of wheat. The male buds are at the tip of the flower spike, while the female flowers shows as a few bright yellow petals towards the base of the spike. The seed capsules or fruit are grey-green and knobbly and have three distinctive lobes. The juice squeezed from the ripe fruit will start out green or bluish-green but will soon change to a deep inky blue and shift through purple to red as it dries.