Low annual branching herbs, with small narrow alternate entire toothed or lobed leaves, and polygamous or perfect flowers in small axillary clusters. Calyx of a single persistent herbaceous sepal. Stamen I. Styles 2, slender. Utricle flat, the pericarp adherent to the smooth vertical seed. Embryo a very nearly complete ring in the mealy endosperm, its radicle turned downward. [Greek, single-scale, from the solitary sepal.]

About 5 species, natives of western North America and northern Asia. Type species: Mono-Icpis trifida Schrad.

I. Monolepis Nuttalliàna (R. & S.) Greene. Monolepis

Fig. 1696

Blitum chenopodioides Nutt. Gen. 1: 4. 1818. Not Lam. 1783. Blitum Kuttallianum R. & S. Mant. 1: 65. 1822. Monolepis chenopodioides Moq. in DC. Prodr. 132: 85.

1849. Monolepis Nuttalliana Greene, Fl. Fran. 168. 1891.

Slightly mealy when young, pale green, glabrous or nearly so when old; stem 3'-12' high; branches many, ascending. Leaves lanceolate in outline, short-petioled, or the upper sessile, 1/2'-2 1/2' long, narrowed at the base, 3-lobed, the middle lobe linear or linear-oblong, acute or acuminate, 2-4 times as long as the ascending lateral ones; flowers clustered in the axils; sepal oblanceolate or spatulate, acute or subacute; pericarp minutely pitted, about i" broad; margins of the seed acute.

In alkaline or dry soil, Manitoba and the Northwest Territory to Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico and southern California. June-Sept.