Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Diffuse to erect, pubescent perennial herbs or subshrubs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades cordate-ovate, sometimes shallowly 3-lobed. Margins crenate to serrate. Petiolate or sessile distally. Stipules present.

Flowers: Flowers axillary solitary or few in cymes; involucel absent, the bracts distinct or basally connate. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx composed of connate sepals, 5-lobed, sometimes irregularly cleft or truncate, the lobes valvate in bud. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, tubular to rotate or reflexed, white or yellow, campanulate to rotate, the corolla of 5 petals, obovate, distinct from each other but adnate at base to staminal column, convolute in bud. Stamens 5 to numerous, monadelphous, forming a staminal column; staminal column shorter than petals, terminated by filaments; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, carpels 8-14, the carpels borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls, placentation axile; ovules 1-3 per carpel; style exceeding the staminal column, branches as many as carpels; stigmas terminal, capitate.

Fruit: Fruit a pendulous; inflated; oblate schizocarp; mericarps reniform; without awns; scarious; each dehiscing into distinct valves or the valves remaining joined basally; adjacent valves sometimes coherent. Seeds brown or black; ovoid-reniform; glabrate to puberulent; with or without endosperm.

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