Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs or subshrubs.

Stems:

Roots: Often with fleshy tuberous roots.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, lowermost sometimes subopposite. Blades flat or terete (cylindrical) fleshy. Margins entire. Short-petiolate or subsessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in terminal, cymose, racemose, or paniculate inflorescences. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx of 2 sepals; sepals imbricate, deciduous. Corolla usually of 5 petals; petals quickly withering, imbricate. Stamens 5 to numerous; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2–3(–9)-carpellate, soon becoming 1-celled, placentation free-central; ovules numerous; style 1, 3–branched.

Fruit: Capsules globose; 1–celled; 3–valved or irregularly splitting. Seeds reniform; compressed; the surface smooth or ridged; endosperm absent; starchy.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: