Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Dioecious or rarely monoecious, erect annual herbs, pubescent with non-glandular and multicellular glandular hairs containing aromatic and psychotropic compounds.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (palmate) or simple and deeply lobed. Opposite, usually alternate above. Leaflets 5–9, fewer above, sometimes simple above. Leaflet margins serrate. Petiolate. Stipules present, persistent.

Flowers: Flowers in staminate flowers in leafy panicles; pistillate flowers in small, leafy clusters, each flower surrounded by a solitary bract, apex abruptly acuminate. in axillary, cymose inflorescences in the usually reduced upper leaves, staminate inflorescences many–flowered and relatively open, pistillate ones few–flowered and compact. Flowers unisexual (and the plants dioecious or sometimes monoecious), small and inconspicuous, green. Calyx of staminate flowers with 5 sepals; sepals oblong, imbricate. Calyx of pistillate flowers scarcely lobed. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens in staminate flower 5; anthers subsessile, staminate flowers Stamens 5, opposite the sepals; anthers dithecal, pistillate flowers Stamens absent. Ovary superior (pistillate flowers), 2-carpellate, 1-celled; ovule 1, placentation subapical, anatropous; stigmas 2, cylindrical. Staminate flowers ovary absent.

Fruit: Achenes lenticular; scarcely compressed; enclosed by an accrescent bract. [Small & Cronquist; 1976]. Seeds with sparse; fleshy; oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

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