Herbs, annual or perennial. Stems erect or decumbent to ascending, stellate-canescent to stellate-silvery-lepidote, rarely glabrous. Leaves petiolate or sessile; stipules persistent or deciduous, linear; blade linear, lanceolate, orbiculate, or ovate to triangular, trullate, or cordate, unlobed or pedately dissected, base tapered, cuneate, or truncate to cordate, margins entire or crenate to serrate. Inflorescences terminal, racemes or panicles, or flowers sometimes fascicled or in axillary cymose racemes; involucel absent or present, involucellar bractlets inflated, cylindric, ovoid, flattened-spheric, flattened-spheric-conic, hemispheric, widely conic, truncate-conic, spheric, truncate-ovoid, ellipsoid, short-urceolate, helmet-shaped, or truncate-spheric, indurate, hairy; mericarps [7–]9–30, drying tan to brown, 1-or 2-celled, without dorsal spur, distally extended or not, usually smooth, apex cuspidate, truncate, or acute, with or without seeds, proximally usually rugose-reticulate and indehiscent, distally ± dehiscent, often remaining attached to fruit axis after maturity by threadlike extension of dorsal vein. Seeds 1 or 2(or 3) per mericarp, glabrous or slightly pubescent. x = 5.
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Bractlets of the epicalyx 0–3, usually caducous; stamen-column bearing anthers at the summit; pet usually emarginate; carpels 10–15, densely stellate on the back, at maturity differentiated into a lower, indehiscent, fertile part comprising at least half of the whole, reticulate on the sides and commonly tuberculate on the back, and a terminal, sterile, dehiscent part with plane sides; herbs with crenate or dentate to deeply parted lvs and a terminal raceme or thyrse of yellowish or brick-red fls. 60, New World and S. Afr.
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