Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Various, woody or herbaceous.

Stems: Woody or herbaceous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple or compound. Alternate/spirally arranged. Margins various. Petiolate or sessile. Stipules generally absent.

Flowers: Flowers rarely solitary, more typically aggregated in axillary or more commonly terminal inflorescences which are frequently involucrate. Flowers often zygomorphic (bilateral). Calyx commonly fused, often reduced or modified. Corolla tubular, bilateral, often due to a slit that runs the length of the corolla; petals valvate. Stamens often connate and forming a tube around the style; anthers basifixed (attached at their base to the filament), free from the corolla. Pollen grains often tricellular. Ovary inferior (except in Rousseaceae); styles long; ovules many per carpel.

Fruit: Fruit capsules or achenes (= cypselae) rarely berries or drupes. Seeds typically small.

Ploidy: x = 9 (Ancestral state)

Habitat: Terrestrial.

Elevation Range: