Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or perennial herbs, sometimes woody at base.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate or opposite. Usually linear to lanceolate, oblong, or obovate, rarely deltate. Usually petiolate, sometimes sessile. Stipules present, often caducous.

Flowers: Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic, (3)4–5(6)-merous, in the upper leaf axils; Floral tube not prolonged beyond ovary. Calyx of (2–)4–5(–7) sepals; sepals green, valvate, persistent after anthesis. Petals present or absent, yellow or white. Stamens as many or twice as many as sepals, in 2 series; anthers versatile, the sporogenous tissue in each cell undivided or divided, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Pollen shed in tetrads or singly. Ovary inferior, as many cells and carpels as sepals; ovules anatropous; style 1; stigma capitate or hemispherical, entire.

Fruit: Fruit an obovoid to cylindrical capsules; irregularly or sometimes regularly dehiscent. Seeds numerous; minute; in 1 to several rows per cell; distinct or embedded in woody endocarp; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: