Terrestrial herbs from rhizomes; stems erect or decumbent, rooting from the lower nodes, terete, slender, often reddish, pubescent to pilose, the internodes short or to 3 cm long, seldom branched. Leaves opposite, usually unequal in a pair, sometimes appearing alternate by the reduction of one of the leaves in a pair; blades membranous, ovate, elliptic to obovate, the base usually strongly oblique, the margin serrate to doubly serrate, dark green, pilose to strigillose and often bullate or areolate above, below light green to deep purple, and pilose especially along the veins beneath, the lateral veins 6-8, arching toward the apex; petioles '-?/2 the length of the blade, those of a pair joined across the stem in a stipular line, green or reddish, pilose. Inflorescences few, each ter-minating a stem, long pedunculate, cymose, racemose, umbellate, or paniculate, barely exceeding the subtending leaf; bracts linear, reduced; peduncles and pedicels slender, terete, green to reddish, densely glandular pilose. Flowers few to many, somewhat zygomorphic; calyx lobes 5, nearly equal, green to reddish, entire; corolla of 5 petals connate into an open-campanulate tube, oblique in the calyx, the base rounded, narrowed, or slightly saccate, with a flaring 5-lobed limb, white or white with blue especially at the limb, sometimes yellow in the throat; stamens 4, usually with a staminode, the filaments slender, curved inwardly, adnate to the base of the corolla tube, the anthers coherent, 2-celled, the cells divergent, the connective thick; disc much reduced or lacking; ovary subinferior, narrowly turbinate, pilose, the apex pubescent, the style thick, sparsely pubescent or glabrous, the stigma stomatomorphic, papillate, the ovules numerous on both the surfaces of the placental lamellae. Fruit a dry capsule, linear oblong, topped by the persistent calyx, opening by 1 or 2 longitudinal slits; seeds numerous, fusiform, striate.
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