Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Vines, herbs, or shrubs.
Stems:
Stems articulate (jointed), often twining.
Roots:
Leaves:
Leaves simple.
Opposite and decussate (pairs of leaves alternating 90 degrees between nodes).
Margins entire to hastate.
Petiolate.
Stipules absent.
Flowers:
Flowers in terminal or axillary racemes or solitary in the leaf axils.
Flowers bisexual (perfect). Each subtended by 2 large bracts.
Calyx small, ring-like or 5–16 lobed.
Corolla 5-lobed, showy, white, blue, yellow, or orange, the tube curved, swollen on 1 side.
Stamens 4, in pairs, inserted on the corolla alternate with the lobes, sometimes 1 or more reduced to staminodes; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits.
Ovary superior, 2-carpellate; ovule placentation axile; style filiform, simple.
Fruit:
Capsules with two cells; usually dehiscing explosively; subglobose; with a conspicuous sterile beak 1–2 cm long.
Seeds not on a modified funiculus that ejects the seeds from the capsule.
Ploidy:
Habitat:
Elevation Range: