Family 1. CHENOPODIACEAE* 
By Pav, CarPENTER STANDLEY 
Herbs or shrubs, or rarely small trees, often succulent, glabrous or pubes- 
cent, the pubescence often of inflated hairs, the stems often articulate. Leaves 
opposite or alternate, estipulate, sessile or petiolate, the blades plane and broad 
or often succulent and cylindric or semiterete, sometimes reduced to scales, 
usually entire, sometimes irregularly dentate or lobed, never regularly serrate. 
Flowers perfect, polygamous, monoecious, or dioecious, usually regular, 
small, green or greenish, usually solitary in small cymose glomerules, these 
spicate, axillary, paniculate, or cymose, or the flowers solitary and axillary, 
sometimes arranged in strobiles or sunken in depressions in the stems, each 
flower bracteate, bracteate and bibracteolate, or naked, the bracts and bract- 
lets usually herbaceous. Perianth simple, sometimes wanting in the pistillate 
flowers, herbaceous or membranaceous, of 2~5 segments or rarely 1, these 
more or less united below, persistent after anthesis and unchanged, or variously 
modified, often accrescent and developing wings or spines or corniculate 
appendages or becoming fleshy or indurate, imbricate in bud. Stamens 
equaling or fewer than the perianth-segments and opposite them, hypogynous 
or adnate to a disk or to the base of the perianth, rarely alternating with 
pseudostaminodia; filaments linear, subulate, or filiform; anthers dorsifixed, 
didymous, oblong, or sagittate, 4-celled, introrse, dehiscent by ventral or 
lateral fissures, the connective narrow, rarely produced into an erect, plane, 
cucullate, or vesiculose appendage; pollen-grains globose, usually with numerous 
pores. Ovary superior, free or rarely adnate to the base of the perianth, 
1-celled, usually narrowed at the apex to the style, rarely truncate; style 
terminal, short or elongate, the stigma capitate, or the styles 2-3 and elongate, 
introrsely papillose, or the stigmas 2-5, sessile, and often filiform; ovule 
solitary, campylotropous, erect on a short basal funicle or suspended from the 
apex of an elongate funicle. Fruit a utricle, membranaceous, coriaceous, or 
fleshy, usually included in the perianth and often deciduous with it, indehiscent 
or rarely circumscissile, the pericarp free or adherent to the seed. Seed erect, 
inverted, or horizontal, lenticular, subglobose, reniform, or ovoid; testa 
crustaceous, coriaceous, fleshy, or membranaceous, smooth or granulate; 
endosperm farinaceous, fleshy, or wanting; embryo annular or hippocrepiform 
and enclosing the endosperm, or sometimes dorsal and conduplicate, or plane 
or conic-spiral; cotyledons usually narrow, planoconvex, the radicle elongate. 
Embryo annular, hippoccrepiform, conduplicate, or semiannular, partly or 
wholly surrounding the endosperm. a 
Perianth-segments strongly imbricate, nearly distinct. I. PotyvcNEMEAE. 
* Published by permission of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 
VoLUME 21, Part 1, 1916] 3 
