Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or perennial herbs, rarely subshrubs.

Stems: Stems erect or prostrate, simple or branched, or rarely cushion-herbs.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Apex mucronate. Blades callose. Margins entire. Stipules present, stipular sheath adnate to the petiole, usually bearing mucilage-producing colleters on inner surface that aid in protection of the growing shoot tip.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences terminal or pseudo-axillary, lax or dense, sometimes flowers solitary at the nodes or clustered; 4-merous. Flowers insect-pollinated, mostly small, bisexual (perfect), isostylous or heterostylous. Calyx cuplike, dentate, lobes 4 (rarely more), mostly small, equal, narrowly to broadly triangular. Corolla tube often short, cylindrical, lobes 4, throat often hairy; nectary disk usually present. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, inserted at the base of the corolla lobes as well into the tube, the anthers, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, dorsifixed. Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, 2-celled; ovules numerous on a peltate placenta; style 1 or as many as carpels, terminal, short or long, included or exserted, glabrous or pubescent, filiform; stigmas 2, subglobose or elongate, lobed or capitate, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit capsular; subglobose to oblong; usually with a loculicidally dehiscent beak. Seeds usually numerous; subglobose or angular; smooth or alveolate; often becoming viscid when moistened; seed coat cells smooth to distinctly punctate; granular or tuberculate; with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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