Erect or ascending perennial herb with conspicuous horizontal rhizome.. Stems juicy, often quadrangular, up to 80 cm. high, but sometimes ± entirely prostrate, glabrous, or with a few scattered hairs.. Leaves of a pair subequal; stipules ovate, persistent, stiff and usually not hyaline, 5–9 mm. long, 2–5 mm. wide, with cordate base and rounded to blunt apex; petiole 1–6 cm. long, glabrescent; lamina circular (rarely ovate) to obovate, 1.1–9.5 cm. long, 0.7–6.3 cm. wide, base truncate to cuneate, margin in the apical 1/2–2/3 crenate to serrate, apex acute to broadly acute; lateral nerves (3–)5–9 pairs, basal pair reaching 2nd–3rd(–4th) tooth from apex, other lateral nerves little branched; upper and lower surface glabrous and of the same colour, upper surface with small, densely and regularly placed linear cystoliths in epidermis, lower surface with scattered hydatodes in epidermis.. Male inflorescences single on glabrous peduncles 1–8 cm. long, flowers in cymose heads, 0.5–1.3 cm. in diameter; ♀ inflorescences on peduncles 1–3.5 cm. long, sometimes branched dichotomously under the first cymose head, with 1–2 lateral inflorescences; ♀ heads 0.5–0.9 cm. in diameter, with inconspicuous brown bracts at the base.. Male flowers on pedicels ± 1 mm. long; perianth 1–1.3 mm. in diameter, 3-merous, tepals with subapical swelling.. Female flowers subsessile; perianth 0.8–1.5 mm. long, with 1 narrowly lanceolate perianth-segment and 2 much shorter lateral ones, the longest one with subapical swelling.. Achene ovoid, compressed, ±1.5 mm. long, brown.. Fig. 9/J, p. 32.
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