Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Evergreen or deciduous shrubs, subshrubs, small trees, or lianas, usually strongly mycotrophic.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, sometimes opposite or whorled. Blades usually narrowly lanceolate to narrowly elliptic. Base sessile and occasionally sheathing at the base. Epidermis or inner wall of epidermal cells often mucilaginous, blades coriaceous. Margins entire, crenate, or serrate. Veins palmate or subparallel. Petioles present or absent. Occasionally sheathing at the base when sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in bracteate spikes or racemes these sometimes paniculate or somewhat umbellate, occasionally solitary in the leaf axils, each flower subtended by 2 bracts, occasionally with additional sepaloid bracteoles along pedicel. Flowers bisexual (perfect), rarely functionally unisexual (and then plants gynodioecious or dioecious), actinomorphic or nearly so. Calyx of (4)5(7) sepals connate or distinct and lobes valvate, imbricate, persistent, usually with venation similar to leaves. Corolla campanulate to funnelform, tubular, urceolate, or cylindrical, (3)5(7)-lobed, the lobes imbricate or valvate, divided shortly to nearly to the base. Stamens usually in 1 or 2 whorls, as many or twice as many as corolla lobes, occasionally up to 20 or some or all of the antepetalous whorl absent filaments distinct or occasionally connate, distinct or adnate at base of the corolla, rarely higher; anthers becoming inverted during development so that the morphological base is the apparent apex, monothecal or dithecal, opening by apical pores or elongate slits extending from the apex, rarely throughout their length, the apex sometimes prolonged into a pair of slender tubules. Pollen borne in tetrads. Ovary superior to partly inferior or inferior, (3–)4–5(10)-carpellate, with as many cells or rarely twice as many, placentation axile, sometimes the partitions imperfect toward the apex and placentation thus becoming parietal; ovules (1–)numerous on each placenta, anatropous or hemitropous to campylotropous; style 1, hollow, the cavity fluted in alignment with the cells; stigma wet, obtuse, capitate or weakly lobed.

Fruit: Fleshy or dry drupe or a septicidal or loculicidal capsules; rarely a nut. Seeds usually numerous; small; sometimes winged; seed coat thin; endosperm firm–fleshy; well–developed; oily and proteinaceous.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Heaths and boggy ground.

Elevation Range: