Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Herbs, shrubs, or vines, often twining.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. opposite and decussate (pairs of leaves alternating 90 degrees between nodes). Blades variable. Blades with abundant cystoliths at maturity which appear as streaks on the blade. Margins usually entire but sometimes toothed or lobed. Petiolate or sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in spicate, racemose, or cymose inflorescences. Flowers bisexual (perfect), zygomorphic to nearly actinomorphic; each flower subtended by often large and brightly colored bracts. Calyx usually 4–5-lobed, in Thunbergia 5–16-lobed or the lobes suppressed. Corolla tubular, 2-lipped or 5-lobed. Stamens 2 or 4 and didynamous; filaments distinct, inserted on the corolla alternate with the lobes, sometimes 1 or more reduced to staminodes; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits.

Fruit: Capsules with two cells; usually dehiscing explosively. Seeds on small hooked stalks (modified funiculus) that ejects the seeds from the capsule (exc. Thunbergia); embryos usually large; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: