Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual, biennial, or perennial herbs.

Stems: Stems erect to prostrate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, those of the inflorescence alternate. Margins entire, crenate, or serrate. Petioles absent or present. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in terminal racemes or lateral racemes in the upper leaf axils, or solitary in the leaf axils. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 4(5)-lobed, cleft nearly to the base, the lobes usually unequal. Corolla blue or violet to pink or white, rotate to campanulate, the tube very short, 4-lobed, the upper lobe largest, formed by the fusion of 2 lobes, the lower 3 lobes overlapping the upper one in bud. Stamens 2. Ovary superior, 2-carpellate, with as many cells; ovule placentation axile; stigma capitate.

Fruit: Capsules loculicidal and sometimes also septicidal; strongly compressed to only slightly so; ovoid to orbicular; apex emarginate to deeply notched and obcordate. Seeds few to numerous; flattened; smooth or rarely roughened.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: