Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect or twining herbs, pubescent with non-glandular and multicellular glandular hairs containing aromatic and psychotropic compounds.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple or compound (palmate). Opposite, often alternate above. Margins serrate. Petiolate. Stipules present, persistent.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary, cymose inflorescences in the usually reduced upper leaves, staminate inflorescences many–flowered and relatively open, pistillate ones few–flowered and compact. Flowers unisexual (and the plants dioecious or sometimes monoecious). Calyx of staminate flowers with 5 sepals; sepals oblong, imbricate. Calyx of pistillate flowers scarcely lobed. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens in staminate flower 5, opposite the sepals; anthers dithecal, pistillate flowers Stamens absent. Ovary superior (pistillate flowers), 2-carpellate, 1-celled, placentation subapical; ovule 1, anatropous; stigmas 2, cylindrical. Staminate flowers ovary absent.

Fruit: Fruit a small nut or an achene surrounded by the persistent calyx (Humulus L.); or persistent as a membranous portion adnate to the pericarp of the fruit (Cannabis). Seeds with sparse; fleshy; oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: