Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small annual or short-lived perennial herbs.

Stems:

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades linear, 1–2 mm wide, ½ as long as peduncles or less. Apex acute. Base sessile. Blades membranous. Margins entire. Sheathing. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in heads, yellowish brown tinged gray, oblong–globose to subglobose, 3–4 mm long, peduncles 4–15 cm long, with a tight green sheath 1–2.5 cm long, 6–7–ribbed at base; involucral bracts and floral bracts oblong–obovate to oblanceolate, shorter than flowers, receptacle pilose. Flowers unisexual; Staminate flowers with sepals distinct, anthers white; pistillate flowers with 3 linear sepals, apex bearded with white hairs, petals glandular, ovary 3-celled. Calyx of (0–)1(–2) sepals. Males flowers with sepals free, hyaline, linear, 0.83–1.5 mm long, 0.16–0.5 mm wide, acute, pubescent with marginal hyaline hairs or glabrous; Female flowers with sepals straw yellow to hyaline, equal, navicular, with broad dorsal wing and transparent window, 1.25–1.8 mm long, 0.7–1.5 mm wide, crested usually with 2 prominent teeth, glabrous or pubescent with a few hyaline hairs on teeth and inner margin. Petals of male flowers 0–2, lobes often obscure, hyaline, equal, oblong, acute, glabrous or pubescent with hyaline hairs in apical fringe; Female flowers with 2 petals; petals hyaline, equal, narrowly elliptic, 1.25–1.8 mm long, 0.25–0.8 mm wide, bifid, pubescent with hyaline marginal hairs. Stamens in 2 whorls, adnate to petals. Ovary superior, carpels pendulous; ovules 1 per cell, orthotropous style terminal, lobed.

Fruit: Capsules loculicidal. Seeds reticulate.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Naturalized along roadsides in disturbed wet forest in the Mountain View area; Hawai'i.

Elevation Range: ca. 460 m.