Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect herbs or soft-woody shrubs, variously stellate pubescent.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades lanceolate to broadly ovate. Apex acute to acuminate. Base truncate to cordate. Margins serrate to crenate. Petioles short. Stipules present.

Flowers: Flowers solitary in the leaf axils or in open or congested, often bracteate racemes or panicles; involucel absent (stipules forming a pseudoinvolucel in 1 species). Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx cup-shaped, obscurely veined, composed of connate sepals, (3-)5-toothed or (3-)5-lobed, sometimes irregularly cleft or truncate, the lobes valvate in bud. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, yellow, yellowish orange, or purplish red, campanulate to rotate or reflexed, often subequal to calyx; the corolla of 5 petals, obovate, distinct from each other but adnate at base to staminal column, convolute in bud. Stamens 5 to numerous, monadelphous, forming a staminal column; filaments terminal on staminal column; anthers 5 to ca. 20. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, (1-)3-celled to many-celled, carpels 5-10, borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls, placentation axile; ovules 1 per carpel, pendulous; style exceeding the staminal column, branches as many as carpels; stigmas capitate.

Fruit: Schizocarp; mericarps trigonous; indehiscent; not strongly differentiated into upper and lower portions;sometimes beaked apically but not spined; lateral walls smooth or reticulate. Seeds ovoid-trigonous; glabrous or sparsely pubescent; with or without endosperm.

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