Poranthera

Annual herbs or perennial small shrubs, glabrous, monoecious. Leaves alternate or subopposite, simple, margins entire, sessile or petiolate; stipules small. Inflorescences short dense head-like racemes, several in a leafy terminal corymb (in Victoria) or solitary; bracts present; male and female flowers mixed, small, white, pedicellate. Sepals usually 5, petaloid, imbricate; petals usually 5, smaller than sepals, sometimes lacking from female flowers. Male flowers usually with 5 stamens; filaments free or united, anthers 4-celled, dehiscing by terminal pores; rudimentary ovary small or absent. Female flowers with a broad, 3–6-lobed, 3-celled ovary, ovules 2 per cell, styles 3, spreading, deeply 2-lobed or notched. Fruit a depressed-globose capsule, opening in 3 or 6 valves; seeds usually 6 per capsule, trigonous, caruncle absent.