Description

Key Characters:

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

Stems: Stems often somewhat succulent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, opposite, or occasionally all basal. Blades often succulent. Margins entire. Petioles usually poorly defined or absent. Stipules dry and membranous or if absent, then often with a tuft of hairs in the axil.

Flowers: Flowers usually in various cymose or racemose to head-like inflorescences, or occasionally solitary. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or rarely unisexual, actinomorphic or rarely slightly irregular. Calyx of 2 sepals; sepals imbricate, often slightly unequal, distinct or connate, persistent or (in Talinum) deciduous. Corolla of (2–)4–6 or occasionally more, most often 5, imbricate, distinct or connate at base. Stamens as many as and opposite the petals or more numerous and usually grouped into bundles; filaments distinct or sometimes adnate to base of petals; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior or partly inferior, 2–3(–9)-carpellate, with as many cells in early developmental stages, soon becoming 1-celled, placentation free-central; ovules (1)2 to numerous, campylotropous, amphitropous, or occasionally anatropous; styles as many as carpels, sometimes connate.

Fruit: Loculicidal or circumscissile capsules; rarely indehiscent. Seeds usually lenticular; smooth and glossy or occasionally tuberculate or roughened; endosperm absent; perisperm usually abundant; starchy; hard or occasionally soft.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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