Description: Dwarf annual herbs, slender, with scattered bristly hairs.
Leaves deeply dissected; sessile or petiolate; stipules present, the lower ones membranous, the upper ones green and fused around the stem, generally 5–7-lobed.
Flowers in condensed leaf-opposed cymes surrounded by the fused stipules. Hypanthium urn-shaped. Epicalyx bracts and sepals 4 or 5, <1 mm long, sepals persistent. Petals absent. Stamen usually solitary. Ovary 1-locular, with 1 ovule.
Fruit an achene enclosed in persistent hypanthium.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 20 species, America, Mediterranean, Asia & Australia. Australia: 3 species (1 species endemic, 2 species naturalized), N.S.W., Vic., Tas.
Text by G. J. Harden & A. N. Rodd
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Sepals lanceolate, at least a third as long as the fruiting hypanthium; fruiting hypanthium brown; stipules generally conspicuously veined and with few hairs | Aphanes australiana |
| Sepals triangular, a quarter as long as fruiting hypanthium; fruiting hypanthium green to yellowish green; stipules not conspicuously veined but the veins with numerous hairs | 2 |
| 2 | Fruiting hypanthium 1.5–2 mm long; lobes of stipules more or less triangular, about half as long as undivided portion | Aphanes arvensis |
| Fruiting hypanthium 0.75–1.5 mm long; lobes of stipules more or less lanceolate, almost as long as undivided portion
Back to 1 | Aphanes inexspectata |
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