Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Herbs, perennial.
Stems:
Stems erect, 20–120 cm tall, usually glabrous, rarely densely puberulent, simple, rarely branched above.
Roots:
Taproots thickened, carrotlike.
Leaves:
Leaves simple.
Alternate.
Blades adaxially green, ovate, elliptic, or lanceolate, 2–7 × 0.5–3.5 cm.
Apex acute or acuminate.
Base broadly cuneate or rounded.
Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces glabrous (rarely puberulent along veins) and glaucous.
Margins serrate.
Short-petiolate.
Stipules absent.
Flowers:
Flowers terminal, solitary.
Flowers bisexual (perfect), large, pedicellate. hypanthium hemispherical, obovoid, or obconic, rarely campanulate, glaucous.
Calyx lobes 5, triangular or narrowly triangular, sometimes toothlike.
Corolla bowl–shaped; lobes 5, blue or purple (rarely pink or white), 1.5–4.5 cm.
Stamens 5, free; filaments dilated into a triangular base, dilated part ciliate; anthers longer than filaments.
Ovary semi–inferior, 5-locular, locules opposite calyx lobes; style solitary, pubescent with pollen-collecting hairs below apex; stigma 5–fid.
Fruit:
Capsules 5–loculicidal at apex; valves with septa; opposite to calyx lobes; globose; obconic; or obovoid; 0.7–2.5 × 0.7–1.5 cm.
Seeds numerous; large; terete (cylindrical); longitudinally keeled.
Ploidy:
2n = 18; 36
Habitat:
Sunny herb communities; thickets; rarely in forests.
Elevation Range:
below 2,000 m.