Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual, biennial, or perennial herbs, occasionally subshrubs, lianas, or small trees.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple or sometimes compound (pinnate). Opposite, alternate, or whorled, sometimes alternate above and opposite below. Margins entire to pinnatifid or rarely palmately lobed, margins entire to toothed. Sessile to petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in cymes, glomerules, or paniculate inflorescences, or sometimes solitary. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic or sometimes zygomorphic. Calyx of (4)5(6) sepals; sepals connate into a tube, the costae green, connected by a scarious membrane. Corolla connate, campanulate, funnelform, salverform, or rotate, (4)5(6)-lobed, connate into tube at base. Stamens as many as calyx and corolla lobes; filaments adnate to corolla tube, alternate with the lobes; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, (2)3(4)-carpellate, with as many cells, placentation axile; ovules 1 to numerous per cell, anatropous or hemitropous; style simple, usually 1; stigmas as many as carpels.

Fruit: Fruit usually a capsules; loculicidal; rarely septicidal; or irregularly dehiscent. Seeds 1 to numerous; often becoming mucilaginous when wet; endosperm copious and oily; sometimes scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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