Citation: Rudge, Trans. Linn. Soc. 10:302 (1811).

Derivation: Latin porus, pore; botanical Latin anthero, anther.

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Porantheras.

Description:
Glabrous annual herbs or perennial undershrubs; leaves alternate or subopposite, with small stipules; monoecious.

Flowers small, white, in short head-like racemes, each subtended by leafy bracts, head-like racemes solitary or more frequently several in a broad terminal leafy corymb; pedicels terete, white; calyx with 5 rarely 3 petaloid imbricate segments; petals 5 rarely 3, minute, each with a small gland at the base; male flowers with 5 stamens rarely 3 opposite the calyx segments; anthers with 4 cells opening in 4 terminal pores or finally confluent into 2; rudimentary ovary small, tripartite or absent; female flowers with a broad 6-lobed 3-celled ovary with 2 ovules in each cell; styles 3, spreading, deeply 2-branched or merely notched.

Capsule depressed-globular, opening in 3 or 6 loculicidal crustaceous valves, the valves usually separating more readily than the cocci, the whole falling away leaving a persistent clavate axis; seed trigonous, acarunculate; embryo terete, curved; the cotyledons not broader than the radicle.

Distribution:  10 species in Australia and New Zealand, 8 or 9 endemic to Australia.

Biology: No text

Key to Species:

1. Perennial undershrubs; leaves alternate, sessile, 10-20 mm long, revolute	P. ericoides 1.
1. Annual herbs; leaves often opposite, petiolate, 5-10 mm long, lamina flat
2. Flower-parts 5; style branches 6, long filiform	P. microphylla 2.
2. Flower-parts 3; styles 3, short, thick	P. triandra 3.

Author: Not yet available