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Herbs perennial or annual, appressed strigose or villous, 20-100 cm tall. Leaves alternate, green, large, thin. Inflorescences rarely solitary, terminal, not branched or paniculate. Fruiting pedicel deflexed. Calyx 5-parted to base or nearly so; lobes enlarged in fruit, vertical to reflexed. Corolla blue, light blue, or light purple, rarely yellow or white, campanulate-rotate to campanulate-tubular; throat with appendages, rarely appendages obscure or absent; lobes 5, imbricate in bud, vertical or divaricate at anthesis. Stamens inserted on corolla, included; anthers orbicular, ovate to oblong. Style and stigma solitary, usually not exceeding nutlets. Gynobase short pyramidal, to 2-3 mm. Nutlets 4, all or some developed, turbinate to ovoid, triangular-ovoid and dorsally compressed, marginal rib with compressed triangular to lanceolate glochids.
Cor salverform or broadly funnelform, the tube often shorter than the cal, the throat obstructed by the fornices; stamens and style included; fruiting pedicels short, recurved or reflexed; nutlets attached by a lanceolate to ovate area occupying the middle third only, the dorsal surface lance-ovate, bordered by a row of glochidiate prickles, and in some spp. with similar prickles on the surface; mostly taprooted perennials, or a few spp. biennial or even annual, with numerous, usually paired false racemes terminating axillary branches, these racemes naked above, leafy-bracteate at base; fls blue or white, small. 45, N. and S. Amer. and Eurasia.
