Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs or subshrubs, sometimes appearing annual, usually pubescent with stellate and sometimes simple and/or glandular hairs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades linear to elliptic or broadly ovate, usually unlobed. Base cordate to cuneate. Margins serrate. Petioles often short. Stipules present.

Flowers: Flowers solitary or glomerate in the leaf axils or in spicate to paniculate, terminal inflorescences, subsessile or pedicellate; involucel absent. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx sometimes yellowish at base, usually 10-ribbed. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, usually yellow to orangish yellow, white, or rose to reddish purple, sometimes maroon basally, rotate to campanulate, the corolla of 5 petals, obovate, distinct from each other but adnate at base to staminal column, convolute in bud. Stamens 5 to numerous, monadelphous, forming a staminal column; staminal column terminated by filaments; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, (1-)3-celled to many-celled, the carpels borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls, placentation axile, carpels usually 5-10 or numerous; ovules 1 per carpel, pendulous; style exceeding the staminal column, unbranched and stigmatically lobed at apex or branched, branches as many as carpels; stigmas capitate.

Fruit: Schizocarps; mericarps 1-seeded; lower 2/3 usually dorsally and laterally reticulate or ridged; indehiscent; upper 1/3 dehiscent; each valve smooth; usually acute or apically spined. Seeds trigonous-obovoid; glabrous or pubescent; with or without endosperm.

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