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Herbs annual, usually covered with dendroid and stellate hairs. Leaves flat or flattened, filiform or linear to lanceolate, margin entire; veins 1-3. Flowers solitary in bract axils, bisexual, forming dense or loose, spikelike inflorescences on upper stem and branches; bractlets absent. Perianth segments 1-3 or absent, unequal, membranous, upper segment larger, lower 2 segments smaller or absent. Stamens 1-3 or 5; filaments linear, flattened, usually longer than perianth; anthers oblong, 2-loculed, longitudinally dehiscent. Ovary ovoid or ellipsoid, compressed; style short; stigmas 2. Fruit a utricle, compressed, oblong to orbicular in outline, abaxially convex, adaxially plane or slightly concave, margin usually winged, entire or erose, plane or crisped, apex emarginate or rounded to acute, beaked; beak with a 2-fid tip formed from style bases; pericarp adnate to seed. Seed vertical; embryo horseshoe-shaped; radicle inferior; perisperm copious.
Fls perfect; cal minute, scarious, of a single adaxial sep, or sometimes also with 2 smaller abaxial sep; stamens 1–3, exsert; ovary compressed, erect, exceeding the cal; styles 2, short; fr indurate, indehiscent, plano-convex, erect, angled or narrowly margined or winged; pericarp closely adherent to the erect seed; embryo annular; much-branched herbs with linear or subulate lvs, the fls solitary in the axils of the bracts, forming a continuous or interrupted terminal spike. Late summer, fall. 50, Eurasia.
