Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs or subshrubs, often scandent.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Margins entire. Petiolate or often somewhat clasping the stem. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in racemes or spikes, these sometimes grouped into paniculate inflorescences, bracteate. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Calyx tubular, 5-lobed, stipitate glandular, plicate, sinuses scarious. Corolla of 5 petals, blue, rose, white, or violet, salverform, the tube slender, persistent, convolute in bud. Stamens 5, distinct, opposite the petals; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 5-carpellate, 1-celled, placentation basal; ovule 1, anatropous, on an elongate funiculus; style short, deeply 5-lobed.

Fruit: Fruit a membranous capsules; circumscissile near base; upper part often splitting into 5 valves; enclosed by the calyx and corolla. Seeds 1 per fruit.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: