Nenax

Dwarf shrubs, dioecious, mostly many-stemmed and often much and intricately branched, with thick woody roots. Leaves decussate or (rarely) in whorls of 3 but often seemingly in much larger numbers at nodes, small and often +/- ericoid, +/- acute, acuminate to mucronate at apex; stipular sheaths (sub)sessile, small, +/- cup-shaped, with or without 1(-3) minute setae on either side. Inflorescence frequently leafy and inconspicuous, made up of subsessile, mostly 3-1-flowered cymes, arranged in pairs, or single at nodes, or flowers solitary and terminal on shoots. Flowers subsessile, subtended by a pair of leafy bracts, 4- or 5(6)-merous. Calyx with lobes small or subobsolete. Male flowers: corolla with tube short, +/- cylindrical to broadly funnel-shaped, lobes recurved, +/- lanceolate; anthers yellowish to whitish, exserted, dangling on long, slender, filiform filaments; minute rudimentary ovary usually present. Female flowers: corolla much smaller; tube cylindrical, lobes linear to +/- lanceolate, erect to +/- spreading. Ovary 2-locular; ovule 1 per locule, erect, from base of locule; style 0; stigmas 2, long-exserted, hairy, often purplish red. Fruit crowned by persistent calyx lobes, sometimes supported by a small +/- U-shaped carpophore, dehiscent, occasionally +/- inflated, or hard, indehiscent, without carpophore. x = 11 (aneuploids).