Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or perennial herbs, occasionally subshrubs or shrubs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, opposite, or whorled. Blades usually very narrow. Margins entire. Sessile. Stipules specialized into glands or absent.

Flowers: Flowers in cymose inflorescences, these sometimes straightening and appearing racemose or spike-like. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Calyx of (4)5 sepals; sepals distinct or connate at base, imbricate. Corolla of (4)5, distinct, rarely connate at base, convolute or imbricate, usually clawed, usually caducous; minute nectaries present at outside of stamens or at inner base of petals. Stamens usually as many as and alternate with the petals, connate at base, occasionally alternating with small staminodes; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, (2)3–5-carpellate, with usually twice as many cells by intrusion of false septa, occasionally 1-celled at apex, placentation axile; ovules 2 per carpel, pendulous, anatropous; styles 2–5, distinct or connate, sometimes nearly to summit; stigmas terminal.

Fruit: Septicidal capsules; rarely drupaceous. Seeds with copious to scanty endosperm; seed coat often becoming mucilaginous and swelling when wet.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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