Carry Me Seed

Annual or biennial, rarely perennial, herbs, 10-170 cm tall or long, erect or prostrate, glabrous throughout; stem simple, base woody, or slightly so and yellowish, straw yellow, or brownish, branched, terete, green at upper part, leaves reduced to lanceolate or triangular scales. Leaves distichous; stipules linear or linear-lanceolate, green; petioles ca. 0.5 mm; leaf blade oblong or elliptic-oblong, 3-8 × 2-4.5 mm, membranous or thinly papery, base rounded, apex obtuse or rounded and often apiculate; lateral veins 4-7 pairs, slightly conspicuous abaxially, obscure adaxially. Plants monoecious. Flower fascicles along lower part of leafy shoots usually male, those in middle usually often bisexual with 1 female and 1 male flower, those toward branchlet apex often female. Male flowers: pedicel 0.5-1 mm; sepals 5, elliptic or ovate, ca. 0.5 × 0.2 mm, yellowish green, margin membranous, apex abruptly acute; disk glands 5, orbicular or obovate, or spatulate, apex truncate or retuse, ca. 0.1 mm in diam., entire; stamens (2 or)3; filaments completely connate into a column, 0.2-0.3 mm high; anthers sessile, 1 often reduced to a single anther sac (or sometimes only 2 functional anthers present), anther sacs divergent, slits completely confluent, dehiscence oblique to less commonly horizontal. Female flowers: pedicels 0.6-1 mm; sepals 5, obovate-oblong or ovate, 0.8-1 × 0.4-6 mm, margin membranous, apex obtuse or acute; disk flat or subulate, deeply 5-lobed; ovary globose-triangular, ca. 0.5 × 0.5 mm, smooth; styles free, erect or ascending, apex shallowly bifid. Fruiting pedicels 1-1.5 mm, dilated at apex; capsules smooth. Seed sharply 3-angled, 0.9-1 × 0.7-0.8 mm, light brown or yellowish brown, radially and with 5 or 6 straight parallel longitudinal ribs on back, minutely transversely striate with hygroscopic cells which project as hyaline setae with a pronounced notching of lumen. Fl. and fr. throughout year.

Believed to be native of central America, now pantropical.

Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Taiwan, Yunnan [pantropical weed possibly originating in the Americas].

470-900 m

Dry fields, roadsides, wastelands, forest margin, scrubby woods; below 100-600 m.

Phyllanthus amarus is a leafy herbal plant found in tropical regions in the Americas, Africa, India, China and South East Asia. Commons names for this plant include gale of the wind, carry me seed, seed on the leaf, pick-a-back, Bhuiavla (Hindi), Bhuiamla (Bengali), stonebreaker, dukung anak (Malay).