Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees, shrubs, or lianas, climbing by twining stems, tendrils of various sorts, or adventitious roots, rarely herbaceous vines or perennial herbs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (1–3 times pinnately compound, trifoliate, or palmately compound) or sometime simple. Opposite or occasionally whorled, rarely alternate, the terminal leaflet of liana genera sometimes modified into a tendril. Petiolate. Pseudostipules composed of leafy bud scales often present. True stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in paniculate, cymose, or racemose inflorescences, sometimes solitary. Flowers bisexual (perfect), usually large and showy. Calyx usually 5-lobed, sometimes bilabiate or the lobes suppressed. Corolla zygomorphic, sometimes strongly so, often bilabiate, rarely nearly actinomorphic, 5-lobed. Stamens usually 4 in pairs, with an additional staminode, occasionally only 2 Stamens fertile with 3 staminodes, rarely 5 fertile stamens; filaments attached to corolla tube, alternate with the lobes; anthers usually dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2-carpellate, with as many cells, sometimes 1-celled or 4-celled, placentation axile or in 1-celled ovary with 2 or 4 intruded parietal placentas; ovules numerous per cell, rarely 1, anatropous or hemitropous, often erect; style 1; stigma 2-lobed.

Fruit: Fruit usually a bivalved; dehiscent capsules; very often with a septum; rarely fleshy and indehiscent. Seeds flat; often winged; endosperm absent; rarely present and oily.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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