Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Herbs, vines, lianas, shrubs, or trees, some species with milky sap; rootstocks sometimes large, otherwise fibrous.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves usually simple, some species compound (palmate). Alternate. Blades entire to pinnately lobed or pectinate. Apex acute, obtuse, acuminate to obtuse–mucronate or emarginate. Base acute, cordate to truncate, petiolate, subsessile, or sessile. Margins entire or occasionally undulate. Petiolate or sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary in the leaf axils or in racemose or paniculate dichasia. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic, 5-merous. Calyx of 5 sepals, each distinct, imbricate, equal or unequal, persistent, occasionally accrescent. Corolla of 5 fused petals, funnelform, campanulate, salverform, or urceolate; limb subentire or deeply lobed. Stamens 5, distinct; filaments inserted on corolla tube base alternate with corolla lobes; anthers dithecal, usually linear or oblong, extrorse. Ovary superior, 2–4-carpellate, usually with as many cells, placentation basal or basal-axile; ovules 2(4, 6) per cell, or ovary 1-celled and ovules 4, these erect, anatropous; style 1, filiform, simple or bifid, or sometimes with 2 distinct style; stigma capitate or bilobed or, when stigmas 2, then linear, ellipsoid, or globose.

Fruit: Capsules dehiscent by valves; transversely; or irregularly; or indehiscent and berry-like or nut-like. Seeds 1–4; often fewer than ovules; glabrous or pubescent; endosperm absent or scanty; cartilaginous; cotyledons usually foliaceous.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: