Annual or perennial herbs or shrublets, monoecious, often covered with hispid hairs. Leaves alternate, petiolate, variously serrate; cystoliths dot-like, prominent; stipules lateral, free. Inflorescences bisexual, rarely unisexual (♀), sessile in leaf-axils, enclosed in a campanulate involucre of bracts; bracts almost completely covered by long dense woolly indumentum (but hairs at base of bracts long and stiff), lanceolate, ovate or obovate, free or fused at base. Male flowers pedicellate, mostly near edge of inflorescence; perianth irregularly 3-lobed; stamen 1, inflexed, later reflexing; rudimentary ovary absent. Female flowers few at centre of inflorescence, without perianth; ovary erect; stigma sessile and filiform. Achene ovate, covered by woolly indumentum.
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