Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or trees.

Stems: Branches usually pubescent with stellate hairs.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades 3–lobed or unlobed. Margins irregularly serrate. 3–7–palmate principal veins. Petiolate, sometimes auriculate at base. Stipules usually large.

Flowers: Flowers usually in terminal or occasionally axillary, paniculate cymes. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or also with some pistillate flowers (and then plants gynodioecious). Calyx of 4–5 sepals; sepals valvate in bud, pubescent. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, tubular to rotate or reflexed. petals 4–5 in perfect flowers, absent in pistillate flowers, valvate in bud, shorter than sepals, without glands at base. Stamens 12–40, staminodial or absent in pistillate flowers; anthers dithecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, 2-celled, falsely 4-celled at base, often borne on a gynophore, the carpels borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls, placentation axile, laterally compressed, ascending to pendulous; ovules 2 per cell; style 1, exceeding the staminal column, unlobed or 2–3-lobed; stigmas terminal or decurrent.

Fruit: Loculicidally dehiscent capsules; sessile or on a gynophore; laterally compressed; with 2 rows of long plumose bristles along the margins; the faces pubescent or glabrate. Seeds (1)2(3); compressed–ovoid; with endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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