Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or biennial herbs.

Stems: Stems erect, branched, glabrous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Margins entire. Sessile and sometimes clasping the stem. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in terminal, occasionally spike-like cymes. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Calyx (4)5-lobed, deeply cleft, the lobes linear, margins often scarious. Corolla pink, rose, yellowish, or salmon, salverform or funnelform, (4)5-lobed, the tube slender, the lobes narrow, apex usually emarginate; nectary disk or distinct nectary glands present, usually surrounding the ovary. Stamens usually exserted, as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits or rarely by terminal pores, oblong, spirally twisted after dehiscence. Ovary superior, 2-carpellate, 1-celled, placentation parietal, sometimes deeply intruded; ovules usually numerous, anatropous; style terminal, filiform, simple or 2-lobed, deciduous, wet and papillate.

Fruit: Septicidal capsules; fusiform to cylindrical or narrowly ovoid; 2–valved. Seeds numerous; minute; the surface reticulate; with oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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