Flowers mostly polygamous or diœcious, 3-bracted. Calyx of 5 sepals. Stamens mostly 5; filaments slender, united into a short cup at base; anthers 1-celled, ovate. Fruit a globular utricle, not opening.—Herbs, with opposite petioled leaves, and minute scarious-white flowers, crowded into clusters or spiked and branching panicles; the calyx, etc., often bearing long wool (whence the name, from εἰρεσιώνη, a wreath or staff entwined with fillets of wool).
1. I. celosioìdes, L. Nearly glabrous, annual, erect, slender (2–4° high); leaves ovate-lanceolate; panicles very slender, often broad and diffuse, naked; bracts and calyx silvery-white, the fertile calyx twice longer than the broad bracts and densely silky-villous at base.—Dry banks, Ohio to Kan., and far southward. Sept.
4. FRŒLÍCHIA, Moench.
Flowers perfect, 3-bracted. Calyx tubular, 5-cleft at the summit, below 2–5-crested lengthwise, or tubercled and indurated in fruit, enclosing the indehiscent thin utricle. Filaments united into a tube, bearing 5 oblong 1-celled anthers, and as many sterile strap-shaped appendages.—Hairy or woolly herbs, with opposite sessile leaves, and spiked scarious-bracted flowers. (Named for J. A. Froelich, a German botanist of the last century.)
1. F. Floridàna, Moquin. Root annual; stem leafless above (1–3° high); leaves lanceolate, silky-downy beneath; spikelets crowded into an interrupted spike; calyx very woolly, becoming broadly winged, the wings irregularly toothed.—Dry sandy places, S. Minn, to Ill., Col., Tex., and Fla.
2. F. grácilis, Moq. More slender, with narrow leaves, the spikelets smaller, and the crests of the matured calyx of nearly distinct rigid processes—Col. to Tex., and is reported from Kansas.
(Addendum) 5. CLADÓTHRIX, Nutt.
Flowers perfect, 3-bracted. Sepals 5, erect, rigid-scarious, somewhat pilose. Stamens 5, the filaments united at base; anthers large, 1-celled. Stigma large, capitate, 2-lobed. Utricle globose, indehiscent.—Densely stellate-tomentose low herbs or woody at base, with opposite petiolate leaves and very small flowers solitary or few in the axils. (Name from κλάδος, a branch, and θρίξ, hair, for the branching tomentum.)
1. C. lanuginòsa, Nutt. Prostrate or ascending, much branched; leaves round-obovate to rhomboidal, 3–10´´ long.—Central Kan. (Meehan) and southwestward.
Order 87. CHENOPODIÀCEÆ. (Goosefoot Family.)