Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Herbs or subshrubs, occasionally lianas or epiphytes, rarely shrubs or small trees.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple, sometimes pinnatifid (divided more than halfway to the midrib). Opposite, rarely whorled or alternate, occasionally 1 leaf of a pair reduced. Margins entire or toothed. Petiolate. Stipules absent or rarely developed as basal auricles.

Flowers: Flowers solitary in the leaf axils or in cymes, rarely racemose. Flowers often large and showy, bisexual (perfect) or rarely unisexual, usually zygomorphic. Calyx of 5 sepals, distinct or connate at base or throughout to form a lobed tube. Corolla usually bilabiate, 5-lobed, occasionally spurred at base, the lobes imbricate in bud, adaxial ones usually internal. Stamens 4(5), inserted on corolla tube, alternate with the lobes, sometimes some represented by staminodes; anthers coherent, occasionally in pairs, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits or occasionally by apical pores. Ovary superior or partly to completely inferior, 2-carpellate, 1-celled, placentation parietal, placentas 2, ± intruded, rarely joined in center and dividing ovary into 2 cells; ovules numerous, anatropous.

Fruit: Loculicidal or rarely septicidal capsules; occasionally a berry. Seeds minute; numerous; endosperm present or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: