19. Dysphania R. Brown, Prodr. 411. 1810.
刺藜属 ci li shu
Neobotrydium Moldenke; Roubieva Moquin-Tandon; Teloxys Moquin-Tandon.
Herbs annual or short-lived perennial, usually aromatic, covered with stalked, glandular trichomes and/or subsessile or sessile glands and/or uniseriate, multicellular trichomes, sometimes glabrescent. Stems branched, rarely nearly simple, erect, ascending, decumbent, or prostrate. Leaves alternate; leaf blade simple, margin entire, dentate, serrate, or pinnately lobed. Inflorescences terminal and axillary, loosely flowered, simple or compound cymes, spikelike, condensed cymes, or dense, axillary glomerules; bracts absent, but glomerules often subtended by reduced leaves (“leaflike bracts”). Flowers bisexual (rarely functionally unisexual). Perianth segments 1-5, usually united only at base or nearly free, in some species fused to form a sac surrounding utricle. Stamens 1-5. Ovary superior, unilocular with 1 basal ovule; styles 1-3, stigmas 1-3, filiform. Fruit a utricle, often enclosed in perianth; pericarp membranous, non-adherent. Seed 1, horizontal or vertical, subglobose to lenticular; embryo annular or incompletely so, surrounding copious perisperm; radicle inferior or centrifugal.
About 30 species: worldwide, mostly from tropics and subtropics to warm-temperate zones; four species (one introduced) in China.
The generic name Dysphania was traditionally applied to some 7–10 species endemic to Australia. Its taxonomic position, as understood by various authors, was very obscure—from a mere section in Chenopodium to the sole genus of a separate family Dysphaniaceae—but its close affinity to “glandular” species of Chenopodium s.l. is now evident.
Here, the genus Dysphania is accepted in a redefined circumscription, including also all other “glandular” taxa previously treated in Chenopodium subgen. Ambrosia A. J. Scott, or segregated in genera Neobotrydium Moldenke, Roubieva Moquin-Tandon, Teloxys Moquin-Tandon, etc. Dysphania in its traditional circumscription has no distinct characters clearly separating it from other “glandular” species previously placed in C. subgen. Ambrosia (see Mosyakin & Clemants, Ukrayins’k. Bot. Zhurn. 59: 380–385. 2002).
