Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Slender creeping perennial herbs, often slightly foetid.

Stems: Stems usually rooting at the nodes.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Petiolate or subsessile. Stipules interpetiolar; stipules usually bearing mucilage-producing colleters on inner surface that aid in protection of the growing shoot tip.

Flowers: Flowers solitary, axillary or terminal. Flowers insect-pollinated, bisexual (perfect), often heterostylus. Calyx teeth 4–5, minute, with open aestivation. Corolla funnelform, 4–5-lobed, the lobes valvate in bud; nectary disk usually present. Stamens 4–5, alternate with the corolla lobes, inserted at base of corolla tube; filaments long exserted; anthers pendulous, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, 2–celled, placentation basal; ovules 1 per cell, anatropous; styles filiform, 2–lobed, the lobes divided nearly to base, pubescent; stigmas lobed or capitate, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; rarely dry; with 2 plano–convex; 1–seeded pyrenes. Seeds with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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