Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Short-lived perennial herbs 3–6 dm tall.

Stems: Stems green or red–tinged, erect, branched, covered with long flexuous hairs, especially when younger.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple, rarely compound. Alternate; widely spaced, blades oblique to petioles. Blades reniform–ovate, (2–)3–11 cm long, (1–)2–4 cm wide. Surfaces sparsely hirtellous; lower surfaces sparsely hirtellous only along the principal veins; blades membranous. Margins irregularly shallowly toothed and ciliate. Petioles usually reddish, 1.5–7 cm long. Stipules lanceolate–oblong, 0.7–1.1 cm long, conspicuously long–ciliate, somewhat persistent.

Flowers: Flowers pendent, in branched cymes. Flowers unisexual (often monoecious); often somewhat irregular. few. Bracts deciduous, similar to stipules. Perianth parts usually distinct, rarely inconsistently connate, staminate flowers usually consisting of 4 parts in 2 opposite pairs, the lower apparently represent the Calyx, the upper representing the corolla, occasionally only 2 parts or more than 4; pistillate flowers usually consisting of a single imbricate series of 5 Perianth parts or sometimes 2–4(6–8). Perianth of staminate flowers in 2 or 4 parts, outer ones broadly suborbicular, ca. 4–7 mm long, inner ones, when present, narrowly elliptic, ca. 2–3.5 mm long. pistillate perianth parts 5, similar to staminate but smaller. Stamens 10–15, nearly distinct; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits or occasionally by terminal pores, the connective usually protruded above the pollen sacs or sometimes well separating them. Ovary inferior, with as many cells or rarely the placental partitions not complete and thus 1-celled, placentation axile or, when ovary 1-celled, parietal; ovules numerous, anatropous; styles distinct or sometimes connate, usually 2-lobed; stigmas usually twisted.

Fruit: Loculicidal capsules; usually with prominent unequal or equal wings; sometimes fleshy and indehiscent; capsules ellipsoid; 0.6–0.8 cm long; winged; the larger wing ca. 8–12 mm wide. Seeds numerous and small; endosperm essentially absent; reticulate.

Ploidy: 2n = 34; 36

Habitat: naturalized; and sometimes locally common; in disturbed; wet; shaded sites; especially moist banks.

Elevation Range: 450–940 m.