Herbs perennial, 20--25 cm. Stems caespitose, few, erect, simple, grayish pubescent with short retrorse hairs throughout. Basal leaves in a persistent rosette, ovate, ca. 3 × 1--1.5 cm, fleshy; cauline leaves 2--4 pairs, lanceolate, 1--2 cm. Cymules 1--3-flowered in a lax, few-flowered thyrsoid. Pedicel sharply deflexed and very short in early anthesis, becoming strict, erect, and 1--3 cm in fruit. Fruiting calyx grayish green, ca. 7 × 4 mm, cylindric, base rounded; veins not anastomosing, dark green to dark violet; teeth triangular, shortly ciliate, apex acute. Petals slightly exserted; claw ca. 2 mm wide at apex with narrow, prominent forward-projecting auricles; limb narrow, deeply bifid with entire lobes. Androgynophore very short, sparsely hairy. Stamens and styles included. Capsule shortly cylindric, subequaling fruiting calyx. Seeds gray, round, ca. 0.8 mm, minutely tuberculate. Fl. and fr. Sep.

Silene sveae is easily distinguished from S. caespitella by its few broad basal leaves, from S. nepalensis by being smaller in all its parts, and from both species by its grayish, slightly fleshy habit, overwintering leaf rosette, few-flowered inflorescence, prominent, forward-projecting petal auricles, and narrow, deeply bifid petal limbs.

* Gravelly river banks, ca. 3000 m. NW Yunnan (Dêqên Xian).