Annual or perennial herbs or rarely subshrubs, unarmed, often fleshy or rather succulent, sometimes creeping. Raphides present. Leaves opposite, decussate, sometimes anisophyllous, without domatia; margins sometimes undulate to denticulate; stipules persistent or caducous, interpetiolar, entire or bifid to fimbriate, sometimes glandular. Inflorescences terminal and/or pseudoaxillary or rarely axillary (Ophiorrhiza oppositifolia), cymose to capitate, fasciculate, or paniculiform with axes often helicoid, few to many flowered, sessile to pedunculate, bracteate or bracts absent; bracts caducous to persistent, sometimes involucral. Flowers pedicellate to sessile, bisexual and distylous or monomorphic or occasionally cleistogamous. Calyx with ovary portion turbinate to obconical, usually strongly compressed, longitudinally often 5-or 10-ribbed; limb reduced or 5(or 6)-lobed, lobed essentially to base or rarely subtruncate (O. repandicalyx). Corolla white, yellow, orange, pink, purple, or brown, sometimes drying with markedly different color, usually notably clavate in bud, at anthesis salverform, tubular, or funnelform with tube often swollen to gibbous at base, outside often longitudinally ridged or winged, inside glabrous to variously pubescent; lobes 5(or 6), valvate in bud, smooth or occasionally ridged, winged, and/or with hornlike appendages near apex, apex sometimes adaxially rostrate. Stamens 5(or 6), inserted near throat to below middle of corolla tube, included or exserted; filaments reduced to well developed; anthers dorsifixed near middle or base. Ovary 2-celled, ovules numerous in each cell on axile placentas attached from middle to base of septum; stigmas 2, linear to subcapitate, included or exserted. Fruit capsular, obovoid to oblate, mitriform, or obcordate, strongly laterally compressed perpendicular to septum, sometimes with apical portion prolonged into a beak, loculicidally dehiscent across top and sometimes along sides, papery, with calyx limb persistent; seeds numerous, small, angled to rhomboid, areolate to alveolate.
Home