Andrachne L.

Monoecious prostrate, decumbent or erect, unarmed or spinous perennial herbs or erect shrubs with or without a simple or glandular indumentum. Leaves alternate, petiolate, stipulate, simple, entire, penninerved, usually small. Flowers axillary, pedicellate, the males mostly fasciculate, the females solitary. Male flowers: sepals 5(–6), free or ± so, imbricate; petals 5(–6), usually shorter than the sepals; disc-glands 5(–6), free, opposite the petals, often bilobed; stamens 5(–6), opposite the sepals, filaments free or connate to halfway, anthers erect, the thecae parallel, distinct, introrse, longitudinally dehiscent; pistillode usually small, rarely more strongly developed, usually  trilobate or tripartite. Female flowers: sepals usually larger than those of the ♂; petals small, minute or 0; disc-glands free and opposite the petals, or united; ovary 3-locular, with 2 ovules per locule; styles 3, short, narrow, bifid or bipartite, stigmas capitate. Fruit globose or subglobose, dehiscing into 3 bivalved cocci; endocarp thinly woody. Seeds 2 per locule, segmentiform, triquetrous, pustulate or smooth, ecarunculate; albumen fleshy; embryo curved, radicle long, cotyledons broad and flat.