Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect, sparsely branched herbs or subshrubs up to 1 m tall.

Stems: Branches sparsely hispidulous with simple and few-branched hairs.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades linear to narrowly oblong-lanceolate, 4-10 cm long. Apex acute. Base cordate to cuneate. Surfaces pubescent with simple and/or stellate hairs, usually denser on lower surface. Margins entire. Petioles much shorter than blades. Stipules filiform, 4-8 mm long.

Flowers: Flowers borne in leafless terminal racemes or corymbs, subsessile or pedicellate; involucel absent. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx campanulate, 4-6 mm long, usually 10-ribbed. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, rotate to campanulate, corolla of 5 petals, obovate, white to pale yellow, magenta at base, 7-10 mm long, 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 included; filaments terminating the staminal column or borne below a 5-dentate apex; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, (1-)3-celled to many-celled, the carpels borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls, placentation axile, carpels usually 5-10 or numerous; ovules 1 per carpel, pendulous; style exceeding the staminal column, unbranched and stigmatically lobed at apex or branched; style branches as many as carpels; stigmas capitate.

Fruit: Schizocarp; mericarps 7; 1-seeded; blackish;2.7-3 mm long; apiculate but without beaks; smooth except for low ridges at the dorso-lateral edge; glabrous; indehiscent; upper 1/3 dehiscent; each valve smooth; usually acute or apically spined. Seeds trigonous-obovoid; glabrous; ca. 2 mm long; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 14; 28

Habitat:

Elevation Range: