Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs, subshrubs, or shrubs.

Stems: Stems wiry, ± thorny, many-branched, older stems often leafless with leaf bases persistent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, decussate, often with short–shoot leaves in fascicles in the axils. Blades flattened to semiterete. Margins entire, often revolute. Sessile and often sheathing at base. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary or in terminal or axillary, divaricately branched dichasia. Flowers bisexual (perfect), sessile. Calyx 4–6-lobed, the tube usually cylindrical, 4–6–ribbed. Corolla of 4–7 petals; petals distinct, imbricate, base clawed. Stamens 3–12(–25), usually in 2 unequal whorls. Ovary superior; 1-celled; ovule placentation parietal to basal with 1–4 placentas; styles 1, elongate, cleft into 2–4 filiform lobes; stigmas 1–3(4).

Fruit: Capsules papery; ellipsoid to ovoid; loculicidally dehiscent; included in the accrescent calyx. [Whalen; 1987]. Seeds few to numerous; seed coat crustaceous; endosperm abundant and starchy.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: