Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or biennial herbs with basal rosettes and spreading to ascending leafy branches.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple or compound (pinnate). Opposite. Margins entire to palmately lobed or pinnatifid. Petiolate or sessile. Stipules present.

Flowers: Flowers several in axillary umbels. Flowers bisexual (perfect), several, axillary. Pedicels often recurved in fruit. Calyx of 5 sepals, distinct or sometimes connate at base, rarely forming a tube. Corolla of 5 petals, sometimes upper ones slightly smaller than others, distinct, nectary glands alternate with the petals. Stamens 5, in whorls, opposite the sepals, alternate with 5 scale-like staminodes, distinct or connate at base; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior or nearly so, 5-carpellate, carpels connate around a central column to form a compound ovary with as many cells, fertile portion a lobed ring at base of stylar column, placentation axile; ovules usually 2 per cell, anatropous to campylotropous, usually pendulous; styles 3–5, slender and beak-like, sometimes narrowed below apex, stylar awn pubescent on inner surface, becoming tightly coiled when detached from the central stylar column at maturity; stigmas slender and dry, rarely capitate.

Fruit: Septicidal and elastically dehiscent capsules separating into as many segments as carpels; a portion of the style splitting off from remainder of stylar column and forming an awn that recurves upward from the persistent central column; usually remaining attached to apex; sometimes the awn also becomes spirally coiled; awn usually hygroscopic; carpel bodies narrow; spindle–shaped. Seeds 1–2 per segment; smooth; endosperm usually scanty or absent; rarely copious and oily.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: