Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Lianas or occasionally vines or subshrubs.

Stems: Stems woody, suffrutescent, or herbaceous, usually woody toward base, twining, prostrate, or trailing, glabrous to densely pubescent, villous, sericeous, or ferruginous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades ovate to ovate–cordate, elliptic, lanceolate, oblong, linear, or linear–lanceolate. Apex acute to obtuse, rounded, or emarginate. Base acute, cordate to truncate, petiolate, subsessile, or sessile. Surfaces pubescent or sometimes glabrous; lower surfaces often sericeous to villous. Margins entire or occasionally undulate, apex acute, obtuse, acuminate to obtuse–mucronate or emarginate. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in simple or compound cymes, sometimes solitary, axillary and/or terminal, pedicels usually up to ca.2 cm long. bracts small, scale-like, or larger and foliaceous. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic, 5-merous. Calyx of 5 sepals, distinct, imbricate, equal or unequal, persistent, usually ovate, ovate–lanceolate to orbicular or oblong–orbicular, sericeous to glabrous, apex acute to obtuse, rounded, or emarginate. Corolla of 5 fused petals; petals white, blue, violet, pink to red, yellow to yellowish white, or greenish white, funnelform to campanulate, sparsely to densely pubescent on middle of lobes. Stamens 5, distinct; unequal to equal, with glandular hairs at base of filaments, rarely glabrous; filaments inserted on corolla tube base alternate with corolla lobes; anthers dithecal, oblong to oblong–sagittate, cordate at base, extrorse. Ovary superior, 2-carpellate, 2-celled, placentation basal or basal-axile; ovules 2(4, 6) per cell, long–pilose to hirsute or glabrous; styles 2, distinct or nearly so to partly connate, the stylar branches equal or unequal, usually glabrous; stigmas globose to capitate, reniform, or rarely peltate.

Fruit: Capsules dehiscent by valves; brown or black; usually with 4–8 valves; sometimes fewer; chartaceous to ligneous; ovoid; globose to conical–ovoid; glabrous or scattered pubescent. Seeds 1–4; ellipsoid to trigonous; smooth or punctate; glabrous or woolly at least on margins; seed coat hard or soft; perisperm thin and transparent; cotyledons usually foliaceous.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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