sect. Myriandra (Spach) R. Keller

Shrubs, shrublets or perennial herbs up to 4.5 m tall, (the shrubs) deciduous, glabrous, without dark glands; branching dichasial/monochasial or rarely pseudo-dichotomous or mixed. Stems 2-4-lined and usually compressed (ancipitous) when young, usually terete, apparently eglandular; cortex exfoliating in flakes or strips; bark thin and smooth or corky and sometimes with laticifers. Leaves opposite, decussate, sessile to subsessile, free, deciduous at basal articulation (where present) or persistent; lamina entire, with venation pinnate and closed to 1-nerved, with tertiary venation densely to laxly reticulate or absent; laminar glands punctiform; marginal gland dots dense; ventral glands absent. Inflorescence 1-∞(over 70)-flowered from uppermost node, some- times also from up to 10 nodes below, branching dichasial or rarely pseudo-dichotomous or mixed, sometimes with subsidiary flowering branches from up to 8 lower nodes; bracts and bracteoles usually reduced, rarely transitional. Flowers stellate, homostylous. Sepals (3-)4-5(-6), free, persistent and spreading to reflexed or deciduous in fruit, with margin entire; veins l-5(-9); laminar glands punctiform; marginal glands rather sparse, submarginal and inframarginal glands absent. Petals (3-)4-5(-6), deciduous, with apiculus present, lateral or rarely subapical, apiculate to obtuse or acute, or absent; margin entire, marginal glands absent; laminar glands sparse, striiform to punctiform, or absent. Stamen fascicles 4-5, not distinguishable individually, forming continuous narrow to broad band of 30-650 stamens (i.e. 6-30 per fascicle), stamens individually deciduous or persistent; filaments free; anthers yellow, gland amber; pollen type VII. Ovary with 2-5 incompletely axile to parietal placentae, each ∞-ovulate; styles 2-5(6), free but mutually appressed at anthesis, later often spreading or recurved; stigmas minute. Capsule 2-5-valved, subcoriaceous, not vittate. Seeds ± broadly cylindric, carinate or not, without apical expansion; testa linear-reticulate or reticulate to linear-foveolate or scalariform.