Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Perennial subshrub to shrub.
Stems:
Stems cylindrical or quadrangular, erect or decumbent, sometimes creeping and irregularly branched forming dense mats.
Roots:
Leaves:
Leaves simple.
Opposite.
Leaves linear, ovate, elliptic, rarely slightly succulent.
Flowers:
Flowers in inflorescences axillary, 5-25 per flowering branch, 1-10-florous; bracts foliaceous; flowers sessile; hypanthium obovate.
Flowers insect-pollinated, bisexual (perfect), often heterostylous.
Calyx of 4 lobes with two lobes longer than the other two.
Corolla 7-20 mm long, pink, external surface glabrous, internal surface with a ring of moniliform hairs near the base of the tube; nectariferous disk entire or 2-lobed.
Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, exerted, slightly shorter than the corolla lobes; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits.
Pollen grains 11–20 zonocolporate, suboblate to oblatespheroidal, polar axis (P) 49.1–100.6 μm and equatorial diameter 56.4–120 μm, with ECA/P = 0.28–0.5, endoaperture forming an endocingulum, with two supratectal elements: conical spines 1–8 μm long.
Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, 2(-5)-carpellate, with as many cells, rarely 1-celled, placentation axile, basal, apical, or rarely parietal; ovules 1 to numerous per cell, anatropous to hemitropous, usually with a funicular obturator and a massive single ingegument; style 1 or as many as carpels, terminal, slender; stigmas lobed or capitate, dry or occasionally wet.
Fruit:
Schizocarps with two evident ventral depressions and mericarps; dorsal face of mericarps visibly 3-5-carinate; dispersed pubescent; puberulous; glabrescent or glabrous; with 1-seriate multicellular trichomes.
Seeds plano-convex; oblong or obovate in outline; embryo apically curved; with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.
Ploidy:
Habitat:
Elevation Range: