Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or perennial herbs, sometimes soft-wooded shrubs or small trees, sap milky or rarely translucent.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Margins usually lobed or dissected, sometimes entire. Petiolate or sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary or sometimes in cymose, umbellate, or rarely paniculate inflorescences. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Calyx of 2(–6) sepals; sepals distinct, rarely slightly connate or connate and calyptrate, caducous. Corolla of (0)4 or 6(8–16), distinct, usually crumpled, sometimes imbricate in bud. Stamens numerous, usually in 2–3 whorls, distinct; filaments sometimes petaloid; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior or sometimes partly inferior, 2-carpellate to many-carpellate, 1-celled, placentation parietal; ovules (1)2 to numerous, anatropous to amphitropous, sometimes placentas intruded and joined in the center to form a many-celled ovary with axile placentation; style ± present; stigmas as many as carpels, usually connate to form a ± discoid or lobed structure.

Fruit: Capsules longitudinally and often incompletely dehiscent by valves; placentas often forming a septum; or opening by pores. Seeds small; smooth or variously papillose; sometimes with a coma or wings; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: