Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Herbs or subshrubs, annual or perennial, trichomes simple.

Stems: Stems erect or clambering-straggling, without nodal spines.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades mostly lanceolate, ovate, or deltate. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences terminal and often axillary spikes or panicles, often fasciated in cultivated forms, many-flowered. Flowers bisexual (perfect), hypogynous. Calyx of 3–5 sepals, sepals distinct, membranous or scarious, usually glabrous. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 5; filaments connate basally into cups; anthers 4-locular; pseudostaminodes absent. Ovary superior, 1-locular; ovules 3–many; style persistent, 0.2–4 mm; stigmas 2–3, capitate or subulate.

Fruit: Utricles ovoid; membranaceous; dehiscence centrally circumscissile. Seeds (2–)3–many; black; flattened; embryo peripheral; surrounding mealy perisperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 18

Habitat:

Elevation Range: