Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Herbs, perennial.

Stems: Stems erect.

Roots: Taproots thickened, carrotlike.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves cauline, 3–or 4–verticillate, opposite, or alternate. Sessile or short-petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers terminal, solitary, pedicellate. Flowers bisexual (perfect), large, tetracyclic, with a specialized method of proterandrous secondary pollen presentation. Calyx lobes 5, synsepalous, adnate to ovary and forming a hypanthium, shorter than hypanthium. Corolla bowl–shaped; lobes 5, shorter than or equaling tube. Stamens 5, free; filaments dilated into a triangular base, dilated part ciliate; anthers longer than filaments, tetrasporangiate, dithecal, introrsely dehiscent by longitudinal slits, basifixed. Disk absent. 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. Seeds numerous; black or dark brown; large; terete (cylindrical); ellipsoid or oblong; longitudinally keeled.

Ploidy:

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