Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Herbs or shrubs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite and decussate (pairs of leaves alternating 90 degrees between nodes). Blades usually with cystoliths. Margins entire and undulate or crenulate. Petiolate or sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences in terminal panicles or thyrses; bracts inconspicuous. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes awl-shaped, equal. Corolla tubular–funnelform, white, red, or yellow; 2-lipped, upper lip 2-lobed, lower lip 3-lobed. Fertile stamens 2, reaching mouth of tube, sterile stamen 2, inserted on the corolla alternate with the lobes, sometimes 1 or more reduced to staminodes; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2-carpellate; ovule placentation axile; style filiform, simple.

Fruit: Capsules with two cells; club–shaped; usually dehiscing explosively. Seeds 4; on small hooked stalks (modified funiculus) that ejects the Seeds from the capsule; embryos usually large; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: