Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or small trees with watery sap.

Stems: Branches usually pubescent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, those of a pair equal or unequal. Surfaces with punctiform cystoliths. Margins serrate or dentate–serrate. Palmately 3-veined, pinnately veined toward apex. Long-petiolate. Stipules usually lateral and distinct, sometimes intrapetiolar and connate at–base, caducous.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary, usually pendulous spikes, panicles, or fascicler, bracts small, scarious. Flowers unisexual (and the plants usually dioecious or monoecious), sometimes bisexual (perfect), rarely polygamous, staminate flowers with clavate or subglobose pistillode. pistillate flowers with staminodes absent. Calyx of staminate flowers (3)4(5)-lobed, the lobes valvate, usually short–corniculate below apex. pistillate Calyx tubular, sometimes compressed.2–4-toothed at apex, hispid, dry at maturity. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens (3)4(5); filaments incurved in bud, elastically reflexed when pollen is shed; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, sessile or stipitate; stigma filiform, somewhat persistent in fruit; staminate flowers with a vestigial and sterile ovary.

Fruit: Achenes enclosed by calyx; thin or hard–walled; angled; winged; or swollen. Seeds 1 per fruit.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: