Anoda Cav.

Herbs or rarely suffrutices, glabrous or variously pubescent. Leaves petiolate, the stipules caducous, the blade often hastate or more or less palmatilobed. Flow-ers axillary and solitary or in terminal panicles or racemes, usually long-pedicel-late; epicalyx wanting; calyx 5-merous, lobed, erect or spreading and greatly accrescent in fruit; petals 5, adnate to the base of the staminal tube, longer than the calyx, variously colored, often purple or blue; staminal tube dilated at the base, filamentiferous at the apex, the filaments numerous, the anthers reniform; ovary of 5-oo carpels, each carpel 1-ovulate, the ovules pendulous or resupinate-horizontal; styles isomerous with the carpels, free at least in the upper part, the stigmas capi-tate or discoid. Fruits discoid or hemispherical, composed of a single whorl of mericarps, these rounded or umbonate to spurred dorsally, the lateral walls evanes-cent, the endocarp often detached from the pericarp and forming a partial or com-plete sac-like envelope around the seed or becoming fused with the outer seed coat; seeds glabrous or pubescent.