Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Herbs, annual or perennial, subshrubs, or shrubs [trees], glabrous or hairy, hairs simple [stellate to dendroid].

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, or more rarely alternate or whorled. Blade with pellucid glands and/or canals containing essential oils. Surfaces with black, reddish, or amber glands containing hypericin and pseudohypericin. Margins entire [rarely gland-fringed]. Sessile, subsessile, pseudopetiolate, or petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences terminal or axillary, cymose [thyrsoid] or flowers solitary. Flowers bisexual (perfect), homostylous [heterostylous]. Sepals persistent or deciduous, (3–)4–5, glanduliferous like leaves. Petals persistent or deciduous, 3–5[–6], distinct, imbricate or contorted [decussate], orange, pink, or yellow, [white, red], sometimes green- or red-tinged, [sometimes with adaxial scale], glanduliferous. Stamens persistent or deciduous, in 2 whorls, sometimes in fascicles, sometimes reduced to staminodes; filaments distinct or ± connate; anthers 2-locular, dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary superior, 2–5-merous; placentation axile to parietal; ovules 1–2+ on each placenta, anatropous; styles 2–5, distinct or basally [to completely] connate, elongate; stigmas minute or ± expanded.

Fruit: Loculicidal capsules [or rarely berry-like]; dehiscence septicidal from apex. Seeds sometimes carinate [winged or carunculate]; endosperm absent; embryo straight [curved]; cotyledons 25–40% of total embryo length.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: