Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect shrubs or suffrutescent herbs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, decussate. Pinnately veined or triveined. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in terminal, simple or compound, bracteate cymes, or solitary and terminal on lateral branches. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Hypanthium campanulate to hemispherical or subglobose at maturity, variously pubescent to glabrous. Calyx lobes triangular, persistent, apex acute to attenuate and usually tipped with a stout hair. Corolla of 4 petals, obovate to ovate, usually glandular ciliolate. Stamens 8, markedly dimorphic; anthers linear–oblong to subulate, with a solitary apical pore, connective of larger anthers prolonged ventrally at base of anthers and modified into a deeply bifid horizontal appendage at the filament insertion, connective of smaller anthers barely modified into a minute, bluntly 2-lobed appendage. Ovary inferior, distinct, 4-celled, crowned by 4 glabrous or bristly scales, placentation axile; ovules numerous; style simple and terminated by a punctiform to capitate stigma.

Fruit: Capsules with loculicidal dehiscence; enclosed by the hypanthium. Seeds cochleate; the surface tuberculate; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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