Herbs, annual, monoecious, covered with rusty-colored, stellate, and whitish simple trichomes. Stems ascending, not jointed or armed, slender. Leaves alternate, petiolate; blade ovate-lanceolate to narrowly lanceolate, base tapered, margins entire, plane or revolute, apex acute to acuminate. Inflorescences glomerules, cymes, or flowers solitary. Staminate flowers in terminal glomerules or at end of pistillate cymes. Pistillate flowers solitary in upper leaf axils or forming cymes commingled with staminate flowers. Flowers unisexual; staminate with perianth segments 3-5, stamens 2-5; pistillate with bracteoles 2, perianth segments 3-4, stigmas 2, filiform. Fruiting structures persistent, accrescent perianth surrounding utricle; utricles winged, obovate to cuneate, laterally compressed; pericarp adherent. Seeds vertical, ovoid; seed coat grayish, granular; embryo horseshoe-shaped; perisperm copious. x = 9.

Pistillate fls in short, bracted, panicled spikes terminating the branches; cal of 3 or 4 hyaline sep; ovary compressed, at maturity minutely 2-winged at the summit; styles 2, filiform; staminate fls several to many in a short terminal spike, or solitary or few at the top of the pistillate spikes; sep and stamens 3-5; seed flattened, obovate, closely invested by the very thin pericarp, the embryo horseshoe-shaped, the radicle basal; annual herbs with alternate, entire lvs. 7, Russia and Korea.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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