| General Information |
| Distribution | Widespread in warmer regions worldwide, perhaps of American originIn the Hawaiian Islands,
naturalized on
Kure, Midway, Ni`ihau, Kaua`i, O`ahu, Moloka`i, Lana`i, Maui, Kaho`olawe, Hawai`i.
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Habit
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Monoecious annual herbs; stems sometimes tinged with red, erect, sometimes ascending, 4-15 dm long, usually branched, striate, glabrous or pubescent with multicellular hairs, especially above, most leaf axils with a pair of divergent spines up to 2.5 cm long.
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Leaves
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Leaves ovate to rhombic ovate, elliptic, lanceolate oblong, or lanceolate, blades 1-12 cm long, 0.8-6 cm wide, glabrous, lower surface occasionally sparsely pilose, especially along the veins, petioles 1-9 cm long.
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Flowers
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Flowers green, in axillary clusters in the lower part of the plant and in unbranched or branched spikes in the upper part, the lower clusters entirely pistillate as are the lower flowers of the spikes, the upper flowers in the spikes staminate, bracts and bracteoles deltate ovate, membranous, tipped with a pale or reddish awn; sepals 5, those of staminate flowers broadly lanceolate or lanceolate oblong, apex acute or acuminate, those of pistillate flowers narrowly oblong or spatulate oblong, 1.5-2.5 mm long, apex obtuse or acute, mucronulate; stigmas (2)3.
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Fruit
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Fruit ovoid, with a short inflated neck below the style base, ca. 1.5 mm long, regularly or irregularly circumscissile, rarely indehiscent, the upper part
rugulose below the neck.
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Seeds
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Seeds black, shiny, compressed, 0.8-1 mm long, inconspicuously reticulate.
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Chromosomes
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2n = 32, 34.
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