Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Slender shrubs.

Stems: Stems virgate, few–branched.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, crowded toward the ends of the branches. Blades linear–lanceolate to elliptic or oblanceolate. Blades chartaceous to subcoriaceous. Margins serrate, serrate–undulate, or serrate–crenate, at least in upper two-thirds. Conspicuously reticulate-veined. Short-petiolate. Stipules somewhat indurate, deltate, with a median ridge, persistent, pubescent or glabrous.

Flowers: Flowers solitary. Flowers fragrant, bisexual (perfect), axillary, on short pedicels. Calyx of 5 sepals, subequal, pubescent or glabrous, margins scarious. Corolla of 5 petals, greenish yellow, purple, or greenish purple, somewhat unequal, the lower one largest and with the lower part thickened and grooved, all petals clawed, the claws laterally overlapping and forming a corolla tube, the limbs elliptic–ovate or elliptic, spreading. Stamens 5; filaments distinct, usually(?) with a dorsal nectary gland; connective of all or only the abaxial anthers prolonged into a membranous, usually incurved, apiculate appendage. Ovary superior, 3-carpellate, 1-celled, placentation parietal; ovules 2–4 per placenta; style 1, filiform, sigmoid, apex enlarged and excavated.

Fruit: Fruit an ovoid; deeply 3–lobed; cartilaginous capsules; venation conspicuous; 3–valved. Seeds obovoid; cartilaginous; glossy; with a prominent ridge; apex truncate and with a conspicuous depression; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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