Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or perennial herbs, occasionally subshrubs, rarely shrubs or small trees.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite or occasionally whorled, rarely alternate or reduced to small scales. Margins usually entire. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in cymes, sometimes solitary or racemose. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or rarely unisexual, actinomorphic. Calyx 4–5(–12)-lobed, with a short or well–developed tube, the lobes imbricate, rarely with 4–5 distinct sepals. Corolla 4–5(–12)-lobed, usually with an elongate or saucer–shaped tube with scales or nectary pits within, the tube also occasionally plicate near the sinuses; nectary disk or distinct nectary glands present, usually surrounding the ovary. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, inserted in the corolla tube or on the throat, rarely some of them represented by staminodes or absent; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits or rarely by terminal pores. Ovary superior, 2-carpellate, 1-celled, placentation parietal, sometimes deeply intruded, rarely forming a 2-celled ovary with axile placentas; ovules usually numerous, anatropous; style terminal; stigma entire or 2-lobed, wet and papillate.

Fruit: Septicidal capsules; rarely a berry. Seeds with oily endosperm; sometimes seeds minute with undifferentiated embryo and scanty endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: