Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs, usually tufted, often with rhizomes and/or stolons.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Primarily basal. Surfaces with flexuous hairs on margins or at least around sheath. Sheaths closed. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary in dichasial cymes or paniculate inflorescences or some times in glomerules in paniculate or spike-like arrangements, bracteolate. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Perianth parts 6, in 2 whorls. Stamens 6, inserted at base of ovary, or 3 inner ones attached to base of inner perianth parts. Pollen grains remaining in tetrads, surrounded by a common exine. Ovary superior, sessile, 1-celled, placentation basal; ovules 3, anatropous.

Fruit: Capsules dehiscing into 3 parts. Seeds 3; globose or ovoid; outer layers white; shriveled; often forming a well defined apical or basal caruncle; often with a tuft of fibrous hairs at base; a vestige of the funiculus.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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