Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial or sometimes annual herbs, sometimes subshrubs or shrubs, rarely small trees.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (palmate or pinnate) or sometimes simple. Alternate or basal. Leaflets often folding at night. Petiolate. Stipules usually absent or minute.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary, sometimes umbellate cymes, or sometimes solitary. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic, sometimes some flowers cleistogamous, sometimes in Oxalis heterostylous. Calyx of 5 sepals, imbricate. Corolla of 5 petals, convolute or rarely imbricate, distinct or occasionally slightly connate. Stamens 10(15), in 2(3) series, sometimes 5 of them without anthers, those of outer whorl shorter and opposite the petals, those of inner whorl opposite the sepals; filaments connate at base; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, (3–)5-carpellate, with as many cells, placentation axile; ovules (1)2 to several per cell, in 1–2 rows, pendulous, anatropous or hemitropous; styles usually 5, rarely 1; stigmas capitate, sometimes 2-lobed.

Fruit: Loculicidal capsules; rarely a berry. Seeds usually with a basal aril that aids in ejecting seeds from capsule; endosperm usually copious; oily and fleshy.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: