2. Mitreola Linnaeus, Opera Var. 214. 1758.
Miterwort, hornpod [Greek mitra, cap, and -la, diminutive, alluding to fruit shape]
Cynoctonum J. F. Gmelin
Herbs or subshrubs, annual [perennial]. Stems erect [creeping], unbranched or branched, glabrous [glabrate, scabrous, puberulent, or pilose]. Leaves sessile or petiolate; blade narrowly elliptic to elliptic, ovate, or suborbiculate, venation pinnate, surfaces sparsely appressed-hairy [pilose] or glabrous, scabrous or puberulent along margins and veins. Inflorescences terminal or axillary, dichasial, 20–100-flowered, each flower subtended by 1 bracetole. Flowers: sepals distinct or shortly connate at base, green centrally with whitish edges, ovate, deltate, or oblong; corolla usually white, sometimes mauve [violet], drying purple, urceolate, throat pilose or with ring of hairs; ovary superior; stigmas knoblike, 2-lobed. Fruits capsules, green, often drying purple, 2-valved, 2-horned, dehiscent along medial line. Seeds gold to dark brown, ellipsoid, obliquely ellipsoid, or depressed-subglobose [fusiform], reticulate or smooth [warty]. x = 10.
Species 8–10 (3 in the flora): c, se United States, Mexico, West Indies, Central America, n South America, s Asia (n India, Malaysia [Borneo]), w Africa, Indian Ocean Islands (Madagascar), n Australia.
A. J. M. Leeuwenberg (1974) and J. B. Nelson (1980) gave thorough accounts of the nomenclatural history of Mitreola and its synonymy.
