Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Succulent herbs, subshrubs, or shrubs, vegetative reproduction common usually by rhizomes, offsets, or bulbils, sometimes bulbils on the leaves.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple or sometimes compound. Alternate, opposite, or sometimes whorled. Surfaces often with a waxy bloom; blades often fleshy. Margins often entire. Petioles usually absent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in cymes or sometimes solitary. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or rarely unisexual (and then plants usually dioecious), actinomorphic. Calyx of (3)4–6(–50) sepals, often very variable in number of parts within a species or even a single plant; sepals distinct or occasionally connate. Petals as many as sepals, distinct or sometimes connate near base. Stamens usually twice as many as petals and in 2 whorls, occasionally as many as and alternate with petals; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior or sometimes partly inferior, carpels as many as sepals, distinct or connate at base, rarely connate to middle, each carpel with a scale-like nectary at base; ovules numerous, occasionally 1 to few per carpel, anatropous, placentation marginal or axile; style 1.

Fruit: Fruit usually of distinct follicles; rarely a capsules. Seeds minute; endosperm scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: