Episcia Mart.

Stoloniferous low terrestrial or epiphytic herbs, rarely suffrutescent; stems decumbent, creeping, or sprawling on the ground or fallen trees, to 1 m or more long, rooting at the nodes, branched or not, pubescent to pilose. Leaves often crowded, opposite, usually nearly equal, ovate or elliptic to lanceolate, the upper surface dark green or with various patterns of variegation, the lower surface often colored, the apex acute to rounded, the base acute to cordate; petioles short. Inflorescences often of single or 2-6 axillary flowers on slender pilose peduncles, bibracteate. Flowers zygomorphic, showy; floral tube short; calyx often ir-regular, the posterior lobe forced back around the corolla spur, the sepals 5, free or shortly connate at the base, linear, oblong to lanceolate, the apex acute, acuminate or erose, green or colored, pilose; corolla salverform to campanulate, conspicuously spurred, inserted horizontally in the calyx, tubular, white, yellow, blue, purple to red, contracted above the spur and at the throat, rarely ventricose, the limb oblique, s-lobed, spreading, the lobes rounded, entire, minutely toothed or fimbriate; stamens 4, didynamous, included, the filaments nearly straight, inserted at the base of the corolla, after anthesis depressed or coiling, the anthers orbicular or oblong, coherent in pairs in a square or arc, becoming free, dehiscing by a longitudinal slit; disc gland 1, large, dorsal, at the base of the ovary; ovary superior, the style included, the stigma stomatomorphic, bilobed, capitate; placentas ovuliferous on both the surfaces or only on the inner surface. Fruit an ovoid bivalved fleshy capsule; seeds ellipsoid, shiny, obliquely striate, brown.