Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees or shrubs, rarely lianas, glabrous to tomentose or villous.

Stems: Branches ± quadrangular.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (palmate) rarely simple. Opposite or whorled (3 per node). Leaflets (1)3–7. Margins entire or dentate, rarely lobed. Usually petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in determinate, short, dense or sometimes open and divaricate cymes, these sessile or pedunculate, in the leaf arils or aggregated in terminal, racemose, thyrsoid, or diffuse, paniculate inflorescences, bracteoles minute, usually linear, occasionally enlarged and longer than calyx. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx campanulate, rarely tubular, (3)5(6)-toothed, the teeth usually slightly unequal, often accrescent. Corolla bilabiate, white or yellowish to various shades of blue or violet, tubular to salverform, upper lip usually 2-lobed, lower lip 3-lobed. Stamens 4, in 2 pairs, inserted on and usually exserted from corolla tube, aligned with the sinuses; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2-carpellate, at first incompletely 2-celled, eventually becoming usually 4-celled; ovules 1 per cell, placentation basal-axile; style 1 arising between lobes; stigmas 2.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; fleshy; 4–celled; endocarp hard. Seeds 1 per cell; obovate or oblong; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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