Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial or annual herbs, usually somewhat succulent, rarely epiphytic.

Stems: Stems rarely twining, nearly always with minute, 3–celled, glandular hairs and with larger, 2–celled to several–celled hairs.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, distichous or spiralled. Blades various. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Sheathing; sheath closed and narrow or expanded, blades often separated from the sheath by a slender petiole, in bud usually each half of blade rolled against the midrib. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in terminal, axillary, or leaf–opposed, cymose inflorescences, these sometimes subtended by a folded, spathaceous, leafy bract, flowers rarely solitary. Flowers usually insect–pollinated, but without nectaries, usually bisexual (perfect) or bisexual (perfect) and staminate, actinomorphic or somewhat irregular. Calyx of 3 sepals; sepals usually green, sometimes petaloid, distinct or rarely connate at base. Corolla of 3 petals, ephemeral, usually blue to pink or white, all similar or 1 colored differently and reduced in size, distinct or occasionally connate toward base, occasionally clawed. Stamens usually 6, in 2 whorls of 3, occasionally only 1–3 fertile and others represented by staminodes or absent; filaments usually slender, often conspicuously long–pubescent; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits or rarely by apical or basal pores, often with an expanded connective, pollen sacs sometimes dissimilar. Ovary superior, 3-carpellate, with as many cells or 1-celled in upper part, sometimes l–2 of the cells imperfectly developed or completely suppressed and ovary appearing l-celled, placentation axile; ovules 1 to several per cell, orthotropous, hemitropous, or anatropous; style terminal, hollow; stigma capitate, penicillate, or 3-lobed.

Fruit: Fruit usually a loculicidal capsules; rarely indehiscent and then occasionally fleshy. Seeds with copious mealy endosperm and compound starch grains; embryo small; capping the endosperm at 1 end; with a single terminal cotyledon and a lateral plumule; or sometimes with a second vestigial cotyledon; the embryo position marked by a disk-like or conical operculum.

Ploidy:

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