Annual carnivorous herbs with fibrous roots or perennial subshrubs regenerating from a subterranean rhizome, with mucilage-secreting glandular hairs. Leaves cauline, alternate, circinnate (rolled) in vernation, subulate-linear, covered entirely with both tentacular and sessile glandular-secretory hairs, and with an apical swelling (hydathode); stipules absent. Flowers solitary in upper leaf axils, bisexual, actinomorphic, rotate, showy. Sepals 5, basally connate, imbricate, persistent. Petals 5, basally connate but appearing free, apices often dentate, serrate or crenate, adaxial surface cerise, lilac, pink-mauve, or magenta, rarely white, abaxial surface colour the same as adaxial or paler, often white, contorted in bud. Stamens 5, inserted at the base of the tube, twisted to face abaxially; filaments free, twisted to face abaxially; anthers dithecal, tetrasporangiate, basixifed, introrse, dehisching by small apical pore-like slits. Gynoecium of 2 connate carpels. Ovary superior, 2-locular; style terminal, filiform, sigmoid; stigma minutely capitate or bilobed, papillate, twisted to face the same direction as the anther pores. Ovules many; placentation axile. Fruit a 2 or 4-valved, loculicidal capsule. Seeds small, angular, prominently sculptured with smooth or denticulate ridges; endosperm starchy; embryo small, linear.
Home