Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or perennial herbs, rarely subshrubs or small shrubs.

Stems: Stems solitary or clustered, often swollen at the nodes.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite or whorled. Base leaf bases often connate around the stem. Margins entire. Petiolate (basal leaves) or sessile (most cauline leaves). Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary in the axils of the upper leaves or in corymbose, 1–sided racemose, or paniculate cymes. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Calyx cylindrical, ovoid, or campanulate, 5-toothed or 5–cleft, 10–nerved to many–nerved. Corolla of 5 petals, clawed, the blade often cleft or toothed and usually with a scale-like appendage at base. Stamens 10, distinct or adnate to petals at base to form a short tube, which may be adnate to the gynophore or sometimes adnate to lower part of calyx, petaloid staminodes sometimes present; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 1-celled or incompletely 2–4 celled, on a well–developed stipe that is adnate to the staminal filament bases and petal bases (referred to as a carpophore); styles 3(4–5).

Fruit: Capsules dehiscent by 6 or rarely 3 apical teeth or valves. Seeds numerous; reniform to globose; papillose or tuberculate; true endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: