Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or perennial herbs, rarely low shrubs.

Stems:

Roots: Roots tuberous, fleshy, fibrous, or small taproots.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate or opposite, upper ones occasionally involucrate around the flowers. Blades linear to obovate or orbicular, succulent and with a tuft of hairs in the axil. Margins entire. Usually sessile. Stipules 2, connate basally.

Flowers: Flowers 2–30 in condensed, head-like cymes, or solitary. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic or rarely slightly irregular, sessile or subsessile. Calyx of 2 sepals; sepals imbricate, persistent. Corolla of 4–6(–8), usually obovate, distinct or connate at base, imbricate. Stamens 4 to numerous; filaments usually puberulent; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary partly inferior, 2–3(–9)-carpellate, soon becoming 1-celled, placentation free-central; ovules numerous; styles 2–9.

Fruit: Capsules membranous; circumscissile at or above the base. Seeds numerous; glossy; tuberculate; endosperm absent; starchy.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: