Annual to perennial herbs or shrubs (rarely trees), with dense cover of bifid, medifixed, appressed hairs. Leaves undivided, linear to elliptic, entire. Racemes ebracteate, with few–many often showy flowers; pedicels slender. Sepals coherent, caducous, not saccate, the outer broader with hyaline margins. Petals variously coloured (colour often markedly changing during anthesis), long and narrow, ± clawed. Stamens 6, distinctly tetradynamous; filaments subulate to linear, free; anthers linear, obtuse. Nectaries horseshoe-shaped around or as 2 prominent separate glands at the sides of each lateral stamen-base, and as 1–few very small glands outside each pair of median stamens. Ovary laterally compressed, ± oblong or bottle-shaped; style distinct; stigma prominent, conoidal and decurrent to semiglobose, ± bifid. Ovules 10 to numerous. Fruit a siliqua, broadly oblong, elliptic or linear; valves usually flat, with rather indistinct midnerve; septum with prominent fibre pattern; style in fruit subulate to linear. Seeds uniseriate, rather large, usually broadly winged, suborbicular in outline, strongly compressed, minutely rugose, reddish brown, mucilaginous.
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