Source:
SSA
Description:
Annual or perennial herbs, with stinging and nonstinging hairs on same plant; stems simple or branched, erect, ascending or sprawling; plants monoecious or dioecious. Leaves opposite, simple, dentate or serrate, (3-)5-7-nerved, petiolate, with dot-like or +/- elongate cystoliths; stipules lateral, usually free, rarely connate. Inflorescences axillary, in racemose or paniculate clusters; bracts narrowly triangular to lanceolate, lacking hooked hairs. Flowers bisexual or functionally unisexual, minute, often ebracteate. Male flowers: tepals 4, equal, free, with stinging hairs; stamens 4; ovary rudimentary, cup-shaped, translucent. Female flowers: tepals 4, unequal, inner 2 equal to achene, outer 2 smaller; staminodes 0; ovary straight, ovoid; style usually 0 or sometimes short; stigma penicillate-capitate, deciduous or persistent. Achene sessile, laterally compressed, ovate or oblong in outline, loosely enclosed in enlarged, membranous, rarely fleshy, persisting inner tepals. x= 10, 11, 12, 13 ( polyploidy).
Distribution:
Species +/- 50, subcosmopolitan but mostly in northern temperate regions, with a few in the tropics and southern temperate regions; 3 in sthn Afr., 1 indigenous, 2 introduced weeds, fairly widespread, Gauteng, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape.
Classification:
Add new comment