Girardinia

Erect, annual or short-lived perennial herbs, with long stinging hairs on all aerial parts; plants monoecious or dioecious by abortion. Leaves alternate, elliptic to ovate, mostly variously divided, coarsely serrate or lobed, always 3-nerved, petiolate, with dot-like cystoliths; stipules intrapetiolar, connate, often large. Inflorescences simple or paniculate spikes, axillary and solitary or paired, male often long, slender with flowers clustered on rachis; female sessile, very densely branched, armed with stinging hairs. Male flowers pedicellate; tepals 4 or 5, ovate, concave, valvate in bud; bud depressed; stamens as many as tepals; ovary rudimentary. Female flowers sessile, with 3 almost completely connate tepals +/- enclosing ovary, split to base on one side, sometimes with 1 minute free tepal; staminodes 0; ovary +/- asymmetrical, reflexed, laterally compressed; ovule erect from base; stigma subulate to filiform, acute, very minutely papillose. Achene broad, oblique, much compressed, rugose, with remains of persistent perianth at base. x= 10, 12 (B-chromosomes).