Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or perennial herbs or sometimes small shrubs.

Stems: Stems prostrate to ascending or erect, often rooting at the lower nodes.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, opposite, or rarely in whorls of 3 or 5 per node. Blades diverse in shape and size. Margins entire, toothed, or deeply dissected. Petiolate or sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in indeterminate spikes, lateral inflorescences sometimes present in the upper leaf axils, each one subtended by a bract and bracteoles. Flowers usually small, bisexual (perfect) or unisexual (and then plants monoecious or dioecious), actinomorphic. Calyx of (3)4 sepals. Petals as many as sepals, hooded, clawed, and keeled; deciduous with the stamens. Stamens usually twice as many as sepals; anthers tetrathecal, opening by slits. Ovary inferior, (3)4-celled; ovules 1(2) per cell, but only 1 maturing, anatropous, pendulous from apex; styles as many as sepals, feathery.

Fruit: Fruit small; nutlike; usually ovoid; variously ornamented with wings; ribs; or tubercles; with persistent; erect sepals; the septa ± absent. Seeds 1 per fruit; filling entire fruit; endosperm copious; fleshy and oily.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: