Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Monoecious or dioecious trees or shrubs.

Stems: With colored sap.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, often peltate. Margins entire. Long-petiolate. Stipules usually conspicuous.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary, bracteate spikes or panicles, 1 to several subtended by an often toothed bract; staminate flowers minute, in clusters; pistillate flowers usually solitary. Flowers unisexual. Calyx valvate in bud, variously colored; calyx of staminate flowers subglobose, 3–4-lobed or 3–4-toothed; calyx of pistillate flowers urceolate or cupuliform, lobed or divided, persistent. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens in staminate flowers 1–30; anthers trithecal or tetrathecal pistillate flower Stamens absent. Ovary superior (pistillate flowers), 1–6-celled; ovules 1 per cell; styles linear–subulate, unlobed. Staminate flower ovary absent.

Fruit: Loculicidal capsules or a schizocarp; often muricate or tuberculate. Seeds with a fleshy seedcoat.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: