Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial herbs or shrubs, occasionally annual herbs or small trees, usually pubescent.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades usually cordate–ovate, unlobed or palmately lobed. Usually petiolate. Stipules usually present.

Flowers: Flowers axillary, solitary or in cymes, often racemose or paniculate by reduction of upper leaves, involucel absent. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx campanulate to cup-shaped, sometimes reflexed, 5-lobed, sometimes irregularly cleft or truncate, the lobes valvate in bud. Corolla actinomorphic to moderately zygomorphic, tubular-campanulate to broadly campanulate, rotate, or reflexed; corolla of 5 petals, obovate, white, yellow, orange, or reddish, sometimes maroon–spotted basally, 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 usually shorter than petals; filaments terminal; anthers monothecal. Pollen globose, echinate. Ovary superior, (1-)3-celled to many-celled, carpels 5 to numerous, borne in a single whorl or rarely seemingly superposed whorls; ovule placentation axile, each with 2-9 ovules in a vertical row; style exceeding the staminal column; style branches as many as carpels; stigmas terminal, capitate.

Fruit: Schizocarps; often tardily separating and appearing capsular; mericarps usually oblong in lateral view; apex blunt; ± awned; lateral walls usually smooth; loculicidal dehiscence complete or partial. Seeds basically reniform; glabrous or pubescent; with or without endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: