Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Diffuse to erect, glabrous or pubescent annual or perennial herbs.

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Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades ovate to reniform or orbicular in outline, unlobed or palmately lobed, the lobes deeply dissected, pinnatifid to shallow and rounded. Margins crenate to serrate. Petioles conspicuous. Stipules present.

Flowers: Flowers axillary, solitary or in cymose clusters, sometimes in terminal racemes; involucral bracts 2-3, linear to ovate, distinct. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx composed of connate sepals, 5-lobed, sometimes accrescent and rotate in fruit, sometimes irregularly cleft or truncate, the lobes valvate in bud. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, tubular to rotate or reflexed, the corolla of 5 petals, white or violet to reddish purple, apex emarginate or 2-lobed, obovate, distinct from each other but adnate at base to staminal column, convolute in bud. Stamens 5 to numerous, monadelphous, forming a staminal column, staminal column shorter than petals, terminated by filaments; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, carpels 9-15, the carpels borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls, placentation axile; ovules 1 per carpel, ascending; style exceeding the staminal column, branches as many as carpels, filiform; stigmas introrsely decurrent.

Fruit: Schizocarps separating into mericarps at maturity; mericarps smooth to strongly rugose-reticulate; indehiscent or ventro-apically dehiscent. Seeds ovoid-reniform; ca. 1.8 mm long; glabrous; with or without endosperm.

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