Home
Female spikes terminal, up to 4 × 3 cm in fruit; bracts few, up to 2 × 1.2 cm in fruit, ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, dentate with up to 5 narrowly lanceolate teeth on each side, foliaceous, up to 11-nerved from the base, sparingly hirsute with bulbous-based hairs and sometimes with a few stipitate or sessile glands along the nerves abaxially, 1-flowered.
Female flowers sessile; sepals ovate-lanceolate, acute, ciliate; ovary c. 1 mm in diameter, 3-lobed, with stipitate glands and a few bulbous-based hairs towards the apex; styles 2–3 cm long, united in the lower sixth to one-quarter, the style arms very sparingly fimbriate, crimson.
Herb, up to 150 mm tall. Stems annual from woody rootstock. Leaves ovate, 40-90 x 13-50 mm, sub-glabrous to hirsute, sessile, drying reddish brown, with veins conspicuous, sharply serrate-dentate. Flowers red.
A perennial herb up to 40 cm high, from a branched rhizome system associated with a fist-sized woody rootstock; stems few–many, usually simple, sparingly pubescent to villous.
Male racemes up to 13 cm long, axillary, solitary, densely flowered on a peduncle up to 7 cm long; bracts resembling the stipules.
Male flowers: pedicels c. 1 mm long; buds depressed, 4-lobed, sparingly puberulous, reddish-brown; stamens 5–7, anthers white.
Seeds c. 3 × 2 mm, ovoid-subglobose, brownish-grey, with a small yellowish caruncle.
Fruits 3 × 4 mm, 3-lobed, sparingly stipitate-glandular, reddish.
Stipules 2–4 mm long, linear to narrowly-oblong.
Petioles 1–2 mm long, or leaves subsessile.
Plants dioecious, rarely monoecious.
