Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Small annual or short-lived perennial herbs.
Stems:
Roots:
Fibrous root system.
Leaves:
Leaves simple.
Alternate.
Blades linear, 1–2 mm wide, ½ as long as peduncles or less.
Apex acute.
Base sessile.
Blades membranous.
Margins entire.
Sheathing.
Stipules absent.
Flowers:
Flowers in heads, yellowish brown tinged gray, oblong–globose to subglobose, 3–4 mm long, peduncles 4–15 cm long, with a tight green sheath 1–2.5 cm long, 6–7–ribbed at base; involucral bracts and floral bracts oblong–obovate to oblanceolate, shorter than flowers, receptacle pilose.
Flowers unisexual; Staminate flowers with sepals distinct, anthers white; pistillate flowers with 3 linear sepals, apex bearded with white hairs, petals glandular, ovary 3-celled.
Calyx of (0–)1(–2) sepals. Males flowers with sepals free, hyaline, linear, 0.83–1.5 mm long, 0.16–0.5 mm wide, acute, pubescent with marginal hyaline hairs or glabrous; Female flowers with sepals straw yellow to hyaline, equal, navicular, with broad dorsal wing and transparent window, 1.25–1.8 mm long, 0.7–1.5 mm wide, crested usually with 2 prominent teeth, glabrous or pubescent with a few hyaline hairs on teeth and inner margin.
Petals of male flowers 0–2, lobes often obscure, hyaline, equal, oblong, acute, glabrous or pubescent with hyaline hairs in apical fringe; Female flowers with 2 petals; petals hyaline, equal, narrowly elliptic, 1.25–1.8 mm long, 0.25–0.8 mm wide, bifid, pubescent with hyaline marginal hairs.
Stamens in 2 whorls, adnate to petals.
Ovary superior, carpels pendulous; ovules 1 per cell, orthotropous style terminal, lobed.
Fruit:
Capsules loculicidal.
Seeds reticulate.
Ploidy:
Habitat:
Naturalized along roadsides in disturbed wet forest in the Mountain View area; Hawai'i.
Elevation Range:
ca. 460 m.