Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect annual herbs up to 2 m tall, with intraxylary phloem, glabrous or sparsely pubescent.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades narrowly to broadly ovate, 4–20 cm long, 2–10 cm wide. Apex acute to acuminate. Base cuneate to attenuate. Upper surfaces with sparse, short, inflated, eglandular hairs; lower surfaces glabrous or nearly so. Margins widely, irregularly, and shallowly dentate or subentire. Petioles 2–6 cm long, narrowly winged above. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in solitary flowers. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic, pedicels 1–2 cm long, recurved. Calyx pentagonal, deeply 5-lobed, lobes ovate, 1–2 cm long, apex acute to acuminate, base sagittate and often mucronate at basal tips, the lobes appressed along the margins to form longitudinal wings. Corolla actinomorphic, broadly campanulate, 5-lobed, pale blue or mauve with a blue spot on the paler base of each lobe, the lobes 1–2.5 cm long, 0.5–1.5 cm wide, margins entire, obtuse. Stamens 5, inserted at base of corolla, included; anthers dithecal. Ovary superior, irregularly 3–5-celled, placentation axile; ovules numerous; stigma capitate, 3–5-lobed; style 1, thick, erect, 3–6 mm long.

Fruit: Berries pale yellowish; dryish; globose; 1–2 cm in diameter; enclosed in the accrescent; scarious; reticulate calyx; splitting irregularly from base when ripe. Seeds numerous; subdiscoid to broadly reniform; 1.2–2.1 mm long; seed coat reticulate–foveolate; embryo curved around the endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 18–22

Habitat: Dry to mesic; disturbed habitats.

Elevation Range: 3–830 m.