Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial or rarely annual herbs, in hawai‘i sometimes shrubs, often rhizomatous.

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Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades suborbicular, reniform to deltate or lanceolate. Margins serrate, crenate, or subentire, the teeth usually glandular. Petiolate. Stipules thin, distinct or adnate to petiole, usually conspicuous, sometimes divided, persistent.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary, 1(2) per peduncle, with a pair of bracteoles usually on the upper ½ of peduncle, sometimes morphologically distinct. Flowers bisexual (perfect), cleistogamous flowers produced. Calyx of 5 sepals, subequal, margins entire to fimbriate–dentate, prolonged into appendages below the point of insertion, persistent. Corolla zygomorphic, consisting of 5 distinct petals, these unequal, lateral ones smaller than upper pair, often bearded, lower one saccate or spurred, usually wider than others. Stamens 5, staminal filaments coherent around ovary, short; anther connective of lower Stamens prolonged into an appendage; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 3-carpellate, 1-celled; ovules numerous per placenta; style straight, curved, or geniculate, filiform to clavate; stigma terminal or subterminal and anterior.

Fruit: Loculicidal capsules; elastically dehiscent by rigid keels and thin valve walls. Seeds numerous; ovoid to globose; seed coat somewhat leathery; dull; usually with a terminal elaiosome; apex rounded; with fleshy; oily endosperm.

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