Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or perennial herbs, shrubs, lianas, or trees, sometimes with thorns.

Stems: Branches usually quadrangular.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple or occasionally compound (pinnate or palmate). Opposite, sometimes whorled, rarely alternate. Margins entire to dentate, variously toothed, or lobed. Sessile to petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in occasionally heterostylous, usually zygomorphic, in axillary or terminal, rarely cauliflorous, cymose or racemose inflorescences, sometimes subtended by an involucre. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or occasionally unisexual (and then plants polygamous). Calyx (4)5(–8)-lobed or (4)5(–8)-toothed, sometimes entire, the tube campanulate to tubular or salverform, persistent and usually somewhat accrescent. Corolla slightly irregular to zygomorphic, occasionally nearly actinomorphic, funnelform, salverform, or campanulate, (4)5(–8)-lobed, the lobes imbricate. Stamens usually 4, in 2 pairs, occasionally 2 or 4–5 and equal, alternate with the corolla lobes; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, usually somewhat 4-lobed, 2–5-carpellate, soon becoming 4–10– celled through the formation of false partitions, placentation axile; ovules usually 1 per cell, erect, anatropous; style terminal or nearly so; stigma lobes usually as many as carpels.

Fruit: Fruit usually a dry schizocarp or drupaceous with thick and dry or fleshy exocarp and ± hard endocarp; 2–4–celled and indehiscent or separating into 2 or sometimes 4–10; 1–2– celled pyrenes. Seeds with endosperm absent or sometimes well–developed and fleshy.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: