Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect or decumbent annual herbs.

Stems: Stems green, 5–angled.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Sessile to short–petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers 1–3 in the axils of the upper leaves or arranged in terminal spike-like inflorescences. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or rarely unisexual, sessile, usually cleistogamous, and then with vestigial corolla, stamens, and style, only the upper ones chasmogamous. Calyx 5-lobed or in cleistogamous flowers 3–4-lobed, sepals connate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla blue to purple, rotate; actinomorphic or, if zygomorphic, then often laterally fenestrate or dorsally cleft, connate, with 5 valvate lobes. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, coherent but separating after anthesis or connate and forming a tube into which pollen is shed; filaments distinct or connate above, attached to the epigynous nectary disk or to base of corolla, rarely adnate to corolla tube. Ovary inferior, sometimes only partly so, rarely almost superior, 3-celled; ovule placentation axile; ovule placentation axile; stigmas wet or dry, 2–5-lobed, appressed and nonreceptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out the pollen, after which the stigmas spread apart and become receptive; style divided at the tip into 3 short branches.

Fruit: Poricidal capsules with 1 pore per cell. Seeds numerous; dark brown; smooth; lenticular; less than 1 mm long; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

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