Parietaria

Minute annual or perennial herbs, erect, ascending, or decumbent, indumentum often of hooked and straight, nonstinging hairs on all parts of plant; plants monoecious or polygamous. Leaves alternate, chartaceous, entire, 3-nerved, with dot-like cystoliths, petiolate; stipules 0. Inflorescences of small, axillary clusters or cymules; lateral flowers with an involucre of leafy bracts. Flowers bisexual or unisexual. Male flowers with 3 or 4 distinct, ascending tepals; stamens as many as tepals; rudimentary ovary present. Female flowers with 3 or 4 tepals; ovary free within perianth, glabrous, +/- pubescent or lanate; ovules erect from base; style short or obsolete, persistent or not; stigma linear, recurved, densely penicillate, deciduous. Bisexual flowers with tepals and stamens as in males, pistil as in females. Achene stipitate, ovoid, smooth, brown, loosely enclosed by persistent, enlarged tepals. x= 7, 8, 10, 13 (polyploidy).