Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect, usually stout perennial herbs.

Stems: Stems usually solitary, 6–15 dm long, striate, glabrous to sparsely papillose–pilose.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades lanceolate or narrowly oblong–lanceolate, (12–)16–60 cm long, 0.8–6 cm wide, basal ones wider. Apex acuminate or obtuse. Base cuneate to rounded. Surfaces glabrous to papillose. Margins strongly undulate, crisped. Petioles 2–30 cm long. Stipules forming sheath or ocrea.

Flowers: Flowers, usually more than 15, in open verticils, these ± widely spaced in leafy, racemose or 1–2–branched, narrow, paniculate inflorescences, pedicels slender, recurved. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Tepals 6, outer 3 much smaller than inner ones, outer Tepals 1.2–1.5 mm long, the valves 1.8–2.2 mm long, enlarging to 3–5.5 mm long in fruit, margins subentire to denticulate or crenulate, green, connate at base into a minute floral tube, the faces of 1 or all of the valves with a conspicuous pale brown tubercle, the tubercles variable, 1–2 mm long, the largest one extending at least ½ as long as the valve, inner 3 valves erect. Stamens 6; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 1-celled; ovule 1; styles 3; stigmas fimbriate, dry.

Fruit: Nuts trigonous; enclosed by the valves; dark brown; ca.2.2 mm long; the surface glossy. Seeds with well-developed; starchy and oily endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 60

Habitat: Primarily in disturbed areas such as along roadsides and near developed areas.

Elevation Range: 6–1,850 m.