Home
Herbs perennial, rarely annual, glabrous or pubescent, often farinose. Leaves simple, forming a rosette. Flowers usually heterostylous with pin (with longer styles) and thrum (with shorter styles) flowers; sometimes homostylous, in umbellate, racemose, subcapitate, or spicate inflorescences on scapes, with bracts; rarely solitary, scapes undeveloped. Calyx campanulate or cylindric, sometimes leaflike, 5-toothed. Corolla tube cylindric, not constricted at throat; limb 5-lobed, spreading or campanulate; lobes 2-cleft, margin entire. Stamens inserted on corolla tube; filaments very short; anthers obtuse. Ovary superior. Capsule globose, ovoid, or cylindric, dehiscing by valves, rarely with an operculum or crumbling; seeds numerous.
Cal campanulate to tubular, 5-lobed, persistent; cor funnelform or salverform, the tube longer than the cal (in our spp.), the lobes retuse or 2-lobed; stamens included, borne on the cor-tube; filaments very short; capsule 5-valved at the tip; scapose perennials, the often large and showy fls in a terminal umbel or head, or in successive whorls on the lfless scape, and subtended by small or leafy bracts. 200, N. Hemisphere.In addition to the following spp., P. veris L., the English cowslip, with yellow fls and somewhat inflated cal, occasionally escapes in the n. part of our range.
Erect, sometimes robust, perennial, rarely annual herbs, up to c. 1 m high. Leaves radical rosulate. Flowers 5-merous in 1 or more superposed whorls or umbels, seldom solitary, sometimes dimorphous, calyx dentate or deeply cleft. Corolla with non-recurved lobes. Stamens inserted in the tube; filaments short. Ovary globose; style variable in length, stigma capitate. Capsule shortly 5-10-valved. Seeds numerous.
