Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Evergreen nitrogen–fixing.

Stems: Branches green, jointed, slender.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple, minute, reduced. Whorled 4–20 per node. Blades scale-like. Sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in staminate flowers in spikes on lateral branches, pistillate flowers in dense, head-like clusters on short lateral branches, staminate flowers consisting of a stamen subtended by a bract and 2 pairs of small bracteoles, the inner pair caducous at anthesis, anthers dithecal, basifixed, opening lengthwise. Flowers unisexual, small and inconspicuous. Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla (petals) absent. Staminate flowers with a single stamen; anthers dithecal, basifixed, opening lengthwise. Ovary superior (pistillate flowers), solitary, 2 carpels, only 1 fertile; ovules 2 in the fertile cell; styles 2, short, terminal; stigmas long, decurrent. Staminate flowers ovary absent.

Fruit: Fruit a 1–seeded; flattened; apically winged nut; somewhat woody cones; each nut enclosed in the woody bracteoles that separate at maturity and give the appearance of an opened capsules. Seeds with seed coat adnate to pericarp; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: