Urera

Small trees, shrubs, woody climbers or lianas, often reaching top of supporting tree, mostly fixed to substrate by adventitious, axillary roots from stems; often with scattered stinging hairs; plants dioecious or rarely monoecious. Leaves alternate, entire to +/- lobed, often palmately nerved, petiolate, with dot-like or sometimes also +/- elongated cystoliths; stipules intrapetiolar, free or +/- connate. Inflorescences dichotomous or irregularly branched panicles, axillary or on older nodes; bracts small or 0. Flowers unisexual. Male flowers: tepals 4 or 5, ovate, slightly imbricate; stamens 4 or 5; ovary rudimentary. Female flowers: tepals 4, unequal, +/- free or connate; staminodes 0; ovary straight or oblique, ovoid; stigma subsessile, penicillate-capitate or rarely sublanceolate, persistent. Achene straight or oblique, either enclosed by the fleshy, enlarged tepals or berry-like and stipitate. Seed with a thin coat. x= 8, 13 ( polyploidy).