Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or perennial herbs, rarely subshrubs or shrubs.

Stems: Stems often swollen at the nodes.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite or rarely alternate. Blade subulate to linear, spatulate to broadly ovate or suborbiculate. Base leaf bases often connate around the stem. Margins entire. Petioles often present. Stipules usually absent, if present, then usually dry and membranous.

Flowers: Flowers in various kinds of dischasial, bracteate, paniculate or racemose cymes, or ultimately reduced to solitary flowers. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or unisexual (and then plants usually dioecious), actinomorphic. Calyx 4–5(6)-merous, sepals distinct, nearly distinct, or connate into a conspicuous tube. Petals present or absent, sometimes minute, notched, cleft, or sometimes fibriate or divided, sometimes sharply differentiated into an expanded part and a basal claw, then often with 2 small outgrowths present at the juncture of the limb and claw. Stamens usually as many as and alternate with the petals, or 10 in 1–2 series, sometimes reduced to 1–4 or 8, distinct or adnate to petals at base to form a short tube, which may be adnate to the gynophore or sometimes adnate to lower part of calyx, petaloid staminodes sometimes present; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior or rarely partly inferior, often on a gynophore, 2–5(–11)-carpellate, usually 1-celled with free-central placentation, sometimes 1-celled in the upper part and partitioned below into as many cells as styles, then placentation axile in the lower ⅓ and free-central above, sometimes basal when only 1 ovule present; ovules 1 to numerous, campylotropous or sometimes hemitropous; styles and stigmas (1)2–5(–11).

Fruit: Capsules dehiscent by as many or twice as many valves or apical teeth as styles; sometimes indehiscent or a utricle enclosed in the persistent calyx. Seeds usually ornamented on the surface; perisperm starchy; hard or rarely soft; true endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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