Laportea

Perennial or annual herbs or shrubs, erect, with stinging and nonstinging hairs; plants monoecious or dioecious. Leaves alternate, dentate or serrate, 3-nerved from base, petiolate, with linear cystoliths, some species with axillary bulbils; stipules obsolete, rarely intrapetiolar, free or +/- connate and bifid, deciduous. Inflorescences axillary and terminal, cymose-dichotomous panicles or rarely simple racemes, pedunculate. Flowers unisexual or rarely androgynous, reflexed; bracts 0. Male flowers usually pedicellate, regular; tepals 4 or 5, distinct, equal; stamens equalling tepals in number; filaments reflexed; rudimentary ovary present, globose or subclavate. Female flowers pedicellate; pedicel sometimes winged; tepals 2-4, unequal, lateral pair usually much larger than median pair, and median pair of unequal size; staminodes 0; ovary straight when young, becoming oblique; style persistent in fruit, hood-like or elongate; stigma obliquely ovate or linear, becoming inflexed and hooked, shortly papillose, sometimes with 2 minute lobes at base. Achene stipitate, oblique, laterally compressed, +/- orbicular, free from and not enclosed by slightly enlarged tepals. Seed with a thin coat. x= 10, 13 ( polyploidy).