Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs or shrubs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Margins entire, often revolute. Sessile and often sheathing at base. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary in the leaf axils or in axillary cymes. Flowers small, usually bisexual (perfect), sometimes unisexual (and then plants dioecious or polygamomonoecious), actinomorphic. Calyx 4–5(–7)-lobed. Corolla of 4–7 petals; petals with a scale-like or claw-like appendage at base. Stamens 4–7(–24), usually 6, in 2 whorls of 3, distinct or connate at base; anthers dithecal, opening lengthwise. Ovary superior; styles 1, elongate, cleft into 2–4 filiform lobes; (2)3(4)-carpellate; ovules (1)2–6(to numerous), anatropous, funiculus +/– elongate, 1-celled, placentation parietal, sometimes intruded or parietal–basal, occasionally strictly basal.

Fruit: Loculicidal capsules enclosed by the persistent calyx. Seeds few to numerous; seed coat crustaceous; endosperm abundant and starchy.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Halophytic.

Elevation Range: