Pouzolzia

Annual or perennial herbs, shrubs or small trees; stems erect or scandent, finely pubescent, without stinging hairs; plants monoecious, rarely dioecious. Leaves alternate, rarely lower ones opposite, simple, chartaceous, entire, often 3-nerved from base, petiolate, upper ones often becoming gradually smaller, passing into bracts, with dot-like cystoliths; stipules lateral, free, often persistent. Inflorescences of compact, axillary bisexual glomerules, branched or unbranched. Flowers single, either in axils of unmodified leaves or subtended by reduced, bract-like leaves; each flower subtended by a triangular chaffy reddish bract. Male flowers pedicellate, with 3-5 tepals; stamens 3-5, concave or abruptly inflexed and dorsally transversely plicate, opposite tepals; ovary rudimentary, clavate or oblong in outline. Female flowers sessile, with an indefinite number of completely connate tepals enclosing ovaries; staminodes 0; ovary included; stigma sessile, filiform, villous on one side, soon deciduous. Achene +/- compressed-ovoid, completely enclosed in enlarged, withered or scarcely changed membranaceous tepals; pericarp shiny, smooth, fawn, brown or white. Seed with thin coat. x= 8, 10, 11, 13 (polyploidy).