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Annual or short-lived perennial herbs or spindly shrubs, glabrous or pubescent with glandular or non-glandular hairs. Leaves alternate, radical and/or cauline, simple, entire to sinuate, petiolate or sessile. Flowers solitary in leaf axils, or inflorescence panicle-like, rarely raceme-like with each flower subtended by a bract; flowers bisexual, actinomorphic or slightly zygomorphic. Calyx tubular to narrowly campanulate, the connate margins often thin and translucent (the thin areas termed 'intersepalar membranes'), 5-lobed, persistent in fruit. Corolla tubular or salver-shaped, white, green, yellow or pink; limb 5-lobed, the lobes usually folded in bud. Stamens 5, equal or unequal in length, often 4 reaching throat of corolla-tube, the 5th shorter; anthers bilocular, dorsifixed, not cohering, dehiscing by longitudinal slits. Ovary bilocular; stigma capitate. Fruit a smooth-walled capsule surrounded by persistent calyx, dehiscing from apex by 4 (rarely 2) valves. Seeds reniform to C-shaped, often angled.
Herbs, shrubs, or small trees; pubescence of simple and glandular hairs. Leaves petiolate or sessile, entire or subentire. Inflorescences paniculate, racemose, or reduced to solitary flowers; peduncle mostly erect; bracts mostly present. Flowers sometimes showy, mostly fragrant, zygomorphic, 4-or 5-merous, pedicellate. Calyx regular or irregular, tubular or tubular-campanulate, lobed. Corolla tubular, funnelform, or salverform; tube lobed to subentire. Stamens inserted below middle of corolla tube; filaments slender; anthers dehiscing longitudinally. Disc ringlike, nectariferous. Ovary 2-locular. Stigma 2-lobed. Fruiting calyx persistent, slightly inflated, partially or completely enveloping fruit. Fruit a dry capsule dehiscing by apical valves. Seeds numerous, minute; embryo erect or slightly bent; cotyledons linear.
Unarmed annual or perennial herbs, occasionally shrubs, usually strongly glandular-viscid. Lvs alternate, simple, entire or nearly so, petiolate; basal lvs much larger than upper and often forming rosettes. Infl. a terminal panicle of open cymes, its branches well-developed, sometimes cymes elongated and appearing racemose. Fls usually pedicellate, sometimes nocturnal and then usually fragrant and pale. Calyx 5-toothed, tubular to subglobose, usually irregular, accrescent. Corolla salverform, funnelform or campanulate, white, pink, shades of red, or yellow, 5-lobed, sometimes oblique. Stamens 5, subequal, usually included. Stigma usually capitate, more rarely lobed. Fr. a capsule with 2 or 4 valves. Seeds small, numerous.
Stamens 5, ± equal or unequal, sometimes one shorter than the other 4, variously inserted at the same or sometimes different heights in the corolla tube, commonly in the basal half, included or elsewhere sometimes exserted; filaments subulate, often from a flat expanded base, often pubescent, sometimes geniculate where adhering to the corolla; anthers attached on the lower part of the back or at the base between the thecae, very shortly ovate to elliptic in outline, the thecae separated from each other by one third to even half their length, dehiscing by longitudinal slits.
Seeds numerous, small or minute, scarcely compressed, globose to ellipsoid, sometimes oblong, ± prismatic or subreniform; testa somewhat leathery, honeycombed-or fluted-reticulate, sometimes obscurely wrinkled-reticulate or-pitted; embryo subterete, ± straight or slightly curved (or elsewhere rarely arcuate) in the axis of the endosperm; cotyledons short, usually one-third to one-quarter the embryo, semi-terete or subclavate.
Ovary sessile, ovoid or ± conical, 2(or rarely 4 to many)-locular; ovules numerous in each locule on somewhat proliferated placentas, adnate to the dorsal line of the dissepiment(s), anatropous; style slender; stigma minute to dilated, capitate, saucer-shaped, slightly grooved or obscurely 2-lobed at the tip, included or sometimes exserted but rarely so in the Flora Zambesiaca area.
Corolla white or variously coloured, greenish, yellow, pink, red or purplish, tubular, infundibuliform or salviform, sometimes campanulate; tubular part often flared into a wider throat; limb shorter than the tube, plicate, erect, spreading or recurving, 5-cleft to ± entire, the lobes with contorted-plicate or rarely imbricate aestivation.
Cymes few–many-flowered, terminal, paniculiform with distinct central axis, sometimes unilateral, pseudoracemiform, bracteate or ebracteate, rarely reduced to one flower; pedicels bracteolate or not, articulated at the base or not.
Calyx commonly much shorter than the corolla tube, ovoid to tubular, sometimes campanulate or cupular, 5-lobed, the lobes shorter than the tube, with valvate aestivation; in fruit usually somewhat enlarged, enclosing it or not.
Fruit capsular, membranous to slightly woody, 2(or rarely 4)-locular, retaining the loose placentas, apically dehiscent by 2 rather long, septicidal slits, the 2 dry valves often 2-fid (or sometimes the capsule 4–many-valved).
Leaves solitary, alternate, the lower ones sometimes in a sparse rosette, petiolate or sessile, entire to sinuate, strongly aromatic; minor leaves often present as auricles or cauline stipule-like processes.
Disk thick, annular, deeply lobed to almost truncate, adnate or joined to the basal part of the ovary, to thin and ± inconspicuous.
Herbs or shrubs to small trees, with varied indumentum, often viscid-glandular, rarely glabrous.
Flowers actinomorphic or somewhat zygomorphic, fragrant or scentless at dusk.
