Plants annual. Taproots filiform. Stems erect to ascend-ing, green, 7-20 cm, glabrous, internodes of stems 1-7 times as long as leaves. Leaves not overlapping, connate proximally, with tight, herbaceous or scarious sheath 0.1-0.3 mm; blade straight to outwardly curved, widely spreading, green, flat, 1-veined abaxially, especially proximal, narrowly lanceolate to oblong, commonly linear, 2-20 × 0.3-1.5 mm, flexuous, margins not thickened, scarious, smooth, apex green to purple, rounded to acute, dull, glabrous; axillary leaves poorly developed. Inflorescences 7-25+-flowered, open cymes; bracts subulate to ovate, herbaceous, margins scarious. Pedicels 0.5-5 cm, glabrous. Flowers: hypanthium disc-shaped; sepals obscurely veined, ovate to elliptic or lanceolate (herbaceous portion elliptic to lanceolate), 2-3.5 mm, not enlarging in fruit, apex green, obtuse to rounded, not hooded, glabrous; petals oblanceolate to spatulate, 1.5-2.5 times as long as sepals, apex rounded, entire to shallowly notched. Capsules on stipe shorter than 0.1 mm, pyramidal-ovoid, 3.5-4 mm, longer than sepals. Seeds yellowish brown, suborbiculate with radicle obscure, slightly compressed, 0.4-0.6 mm, tuberculate; tubercles low, rounded. 2n = 14.

Flowering spring. Sandy or granitic outcrops; 70-200 m; Ala., Ga., N.C., S.C.

Minuartia alabamensis was originally described to accommodate much-reduced plants from Alabama (J. F. McCormick et al. 1971). Subsequent studies have shown them to be conspecific with M. uniflora (R. Wyatt 1984).