Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herb 2-6 dm tall.

Stems: Stems herbaceous, 1–2.5 dm long.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Lower blades ovate, obovate, or spatulate, upper ones linear, 0.5–2 cm long; 3-lobed lower leaves. Margins serrate to dentate, crenate or pinnatifid. Sessile or subsessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers (20–)50–200(–400) in terminal racemes. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 5-lobed, lobes subulate, 2-8 mm long, sepals connate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla zygomorphic, dorsally cleft almost to base. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes; staminal column glabrous; anthers sparsely pubescent, all 5 anthers with apical tufts of white hairs; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, coherent but separating after anthesis or connate and forming a tube into which pollen is shed; filaments distinct or connate above, attached to the epigynous nectary disk or to base of corolla, rarely adnate to corolla tube. Ovary inferior, 2-celled, often crowned with an annular nectary disk; ovule placentation axile, or when 1-celled with 2 parietal placentas; stigmas wet or dry, 2-lobed, appressed and nonreceptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out the pollen, after which the stigmas spread apart and become receptive.

Fruit: Capsules obconical; 5–8 mm long; dehiscent at apex by 2 valves. Seeds numerous; smooth; brown; 0.3–0.5 mm long; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: