Anthospermum

Large or dwarf shrubs, short-lived subshrubs or perennial herbs, male, female, bisexual, bisexual + female, or occasionally male + bisexual + female, bisexual + male, or male + female. Leaves decussate or occasionally in whorls of 3(4), often seemingly in much larger numbers at nodes, blades +/- broad and large to +/- ericoid and small, mostly narrowed to base, acute to acuminate (seldom +/- mucronate or +/- obtuse) at apex, shortly petiolate to sessile; stipular sheaths +/- cup-shaped, bearing 1 to many setae or fimbriae on either side. Inflorescence frequently leafy and inconspicuous, made up of mostly subsessile, many- to very few-flowered cymes; in dioecious taxa often sexually dimorphic (female inflorescence contracted, +/- cylinder-like). Flowers mostly subsessile, subtended by a pair of leafy bracts, male, bisexual or female, 4- or 5-merous. Calyx: lobes large, conspicuous to small, indistinct or +/- lacking. Bisexual and male flowers: corolla with tube cylindrical, broadly funnel-shaped to subcampanulate, lobes recurved, +/- lanceolate; anthers yellowish to whitish, exserted, dangling on long, slender, filiform filaments. Female flowers: corolla much smaller than in male flowers; tube cylindrical; lobes mostly erect, linear to +/- lanceolate. Ovary bicarpellate, 2-locular, in 2 species 1 carpel reduced; ovule 1 per locule; style 0 or very short; stigmas usually 2, long-exserted, hairy, greyish to greenish white, seldom purplish red. Fruit crowned by persistent calyx lobes, supported by a +/- U-shaped carpophore, dehiscing into two mericarps, each convex on dorsal side, plane to concave or sometimes hollowed out and with a prominent to inconspicuous median, longitudinal ridge on ventral side. x = 11 (aneuploids, polyploidy).