Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Vines or shrubs.

Stems: Stems twining, erect, or decumbent, woody or herbaceous, glabrous or pubescent.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades linear, sagittate, hastate, elliptic, or ovate. Apex obtuse to acute, usually mucronate. Base acute, cordate to truncate, petiolate, subsessile, or sessile. Surfaces glabrous or pubescent; blades herbaceous to coriaceous. Margins usually undulate to crenate or irregularly lobed or laciniate, petiolate or sometimes sessile. Petiolate or sometimes sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary or in cymose clusters, pedicels usually 1–3 cm long. Bracts and bracteoles linear, elliptic, or ovate. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic, 5-merous. Calyx of 5 sepals, distinct, inbricate, subequal, the inner 3 often somewhat longer, suborbicular, elliptic to ovate, pubescent or glabrous, apex obtuse to acute, usually mucronate, persistent, occasionally accrescent. Corolla of 5 fused petals; petals white to rose or purple, or blue on the limb and white or purplish within the tube, funnelform, the limb 5-angulate to 5-lobed, the midpetaline bands glabrous or pubescent. Stamens 5, distinct, included, unequal; filaments inserted on corolla tube base alternate with corolla lobes, glandular pubescent on filament bases; anthers dithecal, oblong, auriculate at base, introrse. Ovary superior, 2-celled; ovules 4, placentation basal or basal-axile, ovoid to subglobose, glabrous or pubescent; style 1, filiform, simple or bifid; stigmas 2, filiform, papillose.

Fruit: Capsules dehiscent by valves; transversely; or irregularly; or indehiscent and berry-like or nut-like. Seeds 1–4; black to dark brown; trigonous or rounded; smooth or verrucose; glabrous; endosperm absent or scanty; cartilaginous; cotyledons usually foliaceous.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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