Habit: heteroblastic shrubs, some never scandent (M. mollis, M. aquilonaris, M.microphyllus), some eventually scandent, others always twining; hairs white, uniseriate, pilose hairs with a short base and an elongated terminal cell; and sometimes glandular hairs. Short shoots if present are not spinescent. Leaves: cotyledons two, opposite, linear; seedling leaves lobed sometimes multilobed and laciniate, margins becoming dentate and then entire, variously persisting. Adult leaves mostly alternate,usually two ranked, or clustered funnel shaped, stem clasping; margins generally entire and flat, ± elliptic in shape. Inflorescences terminal and axillary, solitary to corymbose or umbellate; flowers bisexual (protandrous), with parts in fives irregularly placed around the pistil (zygomorphic); dichogamous (temporal) and herkogamous (spatial) changes are noticeable: flowers are white, blues or reds, often with contrasting darker spots, lines, blotches developing with sex phase change. Sepals imbricate and often the same colour as petals. Petals either cohering and appearing tubular, or very briefly cohering and then spreading, or always free.Stamens mostly free, initially white, eventually petal colour; filaments thin, ribbony, sometimes distinctively flared, rarely cohering (M. ringens) and then not past anthesis, usually twisting to cluster by differing heights (2+2+1) opposite petal break, and then curling or kinking away from the developing pistil; anthers versatile, much shorter than filaments, sagittate or ovoid, dehiscing by slits; pollen yellow, blue, pink-mauve. Pistil with wide receptacle and basal nectary; ovary usually stipitate, bilocular, placentation axile; style slender, elongating, curved, persisting; stigma minutely lobed, bifid. Fruits are bilocular capsules, loculicidally, sometimes part septicidally dehiscent, eventually brown, brittle, mostly spindle shaped. Seeds intermeshing into one row in mature fruit in each chamber, dry, not winged, sometimes with a small aril.Flowering mainly in Spring, but several species also peak flower in late summer/autumn (M. tenuis, M. sylvatica).
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