Perennial herbs, often with a creeping rhizome, or annuals. Leaves alternate, basal leaves or leaves of sterile creepers often different in shape from stem leaves. Flowers solitary in the axils of upper leaves or in loose, raceme-like cymes, usually without bracts, pentamerous. Calyx-lobes free to the base. Corolla cylindrical-campanulate or more often rotate with a short tube and spreading limb; scales in the throat well developed. Stamens: anthers nearly sessile, ovoid. Pistil: style shorter than the calyx, usually with a cushion-shaped stigma. Nutlets umbilicate dorsally, attached to the small, pyra-midate receptacle and surpassing it in length several times, depressed globose to ovoid, with an incurved, entire or toothed margin; embryo straight or rarely curved.
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