Description:

• Herbs, undershrubs, shrubs, or trees; monoecious or rarely dioecious; indumentum simple, often glandular
• Leaves alternate, petiolate, 3-7-nerved from base
• Inflorescence various, when bisexual usually basal, when unisexual the male flowers often in long-peduncled spikes below female ones or in close-set spikes or some other variation
• Petals 0
• Disc 0
• Male flowers: calyx splitting into 4 valvate lobes; stamens usually 8, attached to a slightly raised receptacle; filaments free; anther thecae separate, twisted; pistil absent
• Female flowers usually subtended by accrescent bracts; calyx membranous, 3- or 4-lobed or -partite, imbricate, shorter than ovary; ovary 3-locular, with a single ovule in each locule; styles exserted, free or connate at base, variable
• Fruit a 3-locular, 3-lobed capsule, soon dehiscing septicidally into bivalved cocci
• Seeds subglobose or ellipsoid, with crustaceous testa; carunculate or not; albumen fleshy; cotyledons broad, flat
• x = 10 (7, 12 - 1 report) (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Acalypha L.
  • Linnaeus: 1003 (1753)
  • Prain: 466 (1920)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 185 (1987)
  • Webster: 90 (1994)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 182 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 450, cosmopolitan in warm regions
• Southern Africa: Species 22, widespread