Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Aquatic, terrestrial, or epiphytic, carnivorous annual or perennial herbs, with special vegetative organs adapted for digestion of captured small insects or crustaceans.

Stems: Stems photosynthetic and often modified into leaf-like, entire or dissected structures, roots occasionally absent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple, sometimes absent and replaced by photosynthetic stems. Alternate, crowded into a basal rosette, sometimes with tubular trap–leaves arising from the rhizome. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in bracteate racemes, rarely solitary, peduncles naked or nearly so. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx zygomorphic or occasionally subactinomorphic, 4–5-lobed, usually more deeply cleft laterally, forming an upper and lower lip, persistent. Corolla usually violet or yellow, zygomorphic, bilabiate, 5-lobed, the lobes imbricate, lower lip saccate or spurred and usually with a raised, ± gibbous palate. Stamens 2; anthers monothecal or dithecal, the thecae usually confluent.

Fruit: Capsules with circumscissile dehiscience; 2–4–valved or sometimes irregularly dehiscent or indehiscent. Seeds (1–)numerous; small; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: