Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual, biennial, or rarely perennial herbs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, Usually well-developed below and strongly reduced above. Margins pinnately lobed or dissected, or sometimes entire. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers terminal or axillary in the upper branches, either solitary, unevenly paired, or in small clusters at ends of paniculate branches, flowers within each pair or cluster without bracts. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx deeply cleft, 5-lobed, the membrane between lobes usually distended or ruptured by the maturing capsule, the lobes usually equal, connate into a tube, the costae green, connected by a scarious membrane. Corolla essentially actinomorphic, (4)5(6)-lobed, blue, lavender, pink, sometimes yellow or white, usually with a yellow throat, rotate to funnelform, connate into a tube at base. Stamens as many as calyx and corolla lobes, usually equally inserted on corolla tube or throat; filaments equal or unequal; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, (2)3(4)-carpellate, with as many cells; ovule placentation axile; style simple; stigmas as many as carpels.

Fruit: Capsules spheric to ovoid; chambers 3. Seeds usually 2–6 per cell; viscid when wet.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: