Description:

• Erect, tall, annual, aromatic herbs without latex, dioecious, rarely monoecious; most parts of plant with minute adpressed swollen-based glandular hairs. Male and female plants dimorphic:
  • Males taller and more slender with longer narrower leaflets, inflorescence sparsely leafy, plant dying soon after flowering
  • Female shorter, more robust, inflorescence densely leafy, plant living several months after pollination
• Leaves alternate (opposite at stem base), petiolate, palmately compound or lobed, leaflets uneven in size, serrate; stipules lateral, linear, acute, persistent
• Male inflorescences axillary, much-branched, lax, cymose panicles, bristly-hairy, exceeding leaves but bearing few scattered leaves
• Male flowers small, pedicellate, regular; perianth uniseriate, lobes 5, free, imbricate, greenish or whitish, boat-shaped, spreading or reflexed; stamens 5, opposite perianth lobes, erect in bud, pendulous at maturity, dehiscence longitudinal, basipetal; filaments short; pistillode 0
• Female inflorescences axillary, short, compact, not exceeding leaves, few-flowered
• Female flowers in pairs, each with stipule-like bract and small green organ ('bracteole' or 'calyx') completely enveloping ovary and loosely enclosing mature fruit, forming basally swollen tubular sheath acuminate at apex and covered with fine hairs and short-stalked or sessile resinous glands; perianth thin, undivided, tightly enveloping ovary and mature fruit (often reduced or absent in cultivated forms), marbled with light and dark areas; ovary superior, sessile, ± globose, 1-locular; ovule solitary, anatropous, bitegmic, crassinucellar and pendent from near apex of locule; style short; stigma branches 2, long, filiform, densely pubescent, caducous
• Fruit a globular to ovoid achene tightly covered by thin crustaceous perianth, reticulate venation of surface beneath perianth visible
• Seed 1; endosperm sparse, fleshy, oily; embryo strongly curved or coiled; cotyledons fleshy
• x = 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Cannabis L.
  • Linnaeus: 1027 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 453 (1754)
  • Adanson: 376 (1763)
  • Lamarck: 694 (1785)
  • Jussieu: 400 (1789)
  • Candolle: 30 (1869)
  • Baillon: 159 (1875)
  • Bentham: 357 (1880)
  • Engler: 96 (1888)
  • Rendle: 16 (1916)
  • Burtt Davy: 445 (1932)
  • Tutin: 67 (1964)
  • Henderson & Anderson: 70 (1966)
  • Miller: 185 (1970)
  • Emboden: 304 (1974)
  • Schultes et al.: 337 (1974)
  • Small & Cronquist: 405 (1976)
  • Anderson: 61 (1980)
  • Wilmot-Dear: 10 (1991)
  • Kubitzki: 205 (1993)
  • Small: 381 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 1: *Cannabis sativa L. with 3 varieties, 'Dagga', probably originally from Asia and now widely cultivated and naturalised worldwide in warmer areas