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Herbs, annual or perennial, subshrubs, or shrubs. Stems erect, ascending, or reclining to procumbent, glabrous or hairy, sometimes viscid (S. glabra). Leaves spirally arranged (distichous in S. planicaulis and S. ulmifolia), petiolate or subsessile; stipules persistent, usually linear to lanceolate or falcate; blade usually unlobed (lobed with maplelike leaves in S. hermaphrodita), base cuneate, cordate, subcordate, truncate, or rounded, margins crenate, dentate, serrate, or entire. Inflorescences axillary solitary (sometimes paired or clustered) often plicate in bud, usually 1/2 divided, often 10-ribbed at base (unribbed in S. hermaphrodita) or angulate, lobes acute or acuminate to triangular or ovate; corolla white, cream, yellow, yellow-orange, salmon-pink, red-orange, or reddish [purplish], sometimes with dark-red center; staminal column included; style 5–14-branched; stigmas capitate. Fruits developed or muticous, reticulate, glabrous or hairy, lateral walls usually persistent, indehiscent below with well-differentiated dorsal wall, indehiscent or partially dehiscent apically. Seeds 1 per mericarp, glabrous. x = 7, 8.
Herbs perennial or annual, subshrubs or shrubs, to 2 m, most parts with stellate, simple and/or glandular hairs. Leaves simple; stipules threadlike to narrowly lanceolate; leaf blade entire (sometimes lobed), margin usually dentate, without foliar nectaries. Flowers solitary or paired, axillary or subterminal, often in axillary or terminal racemes or panicles, rarely in umbels or glomerules. Epicalyx absent. Calyx campanulate or cup-shaped, 5-lobed, often 10-ribbed basally and plicate in bud. Corolla mostly yellow, rarely white or ± orange [or rose or purplish], sometimes with a dark center. Petals 5, free, basally connate. Filament tube pubescent or glabrous, with many anthers at apex. Ovary 5-10-loculed; ovules 1 per locule, pendulous; style branches as many as carpels; stigma capitate. Schizocarp ± disk-shaped or globose; mericarps (4-)5-10(-14), sculptured or smooth, sometimes partly membranous, mostly beaked, often with 1 or 2 apical awns, often minutely stellate puberulent, dehiscent or indehiscent. Seeds 1 per mericarp, smooth, glabrous except sometimes for minute hairs around hilum.
Epicalyx wanting (in our spp.); cal 5-lobed, persistent and enclosing the fr, the ten costae leading alternately to the lobes and sinuses; stamen-column bearing anthers at the top; carpels 5–15, each with a single pendulous ovule; mature mericarps each with a lower, indehiscent, 1-seeded portion and an upper, dehiscent portion that is often tipped with 1 or 2 erect or connivent or inflexed beaks; upper and lower parts of the mericarp set apart dorsally by a shoulder that is an extension and joining of 2 lateral ribs; herbs and small shrubs with mostly small fls solitary or fascicled in the axils or forming a terminal panicle. 150+, warm reg.
Annual to perennial herbs or shrubs. Lvs toothed or lobed. Fls axillary and solitary, or in terminal spikes or heads; epicalyx 0; calyx evenly 5-toothed; petals spreading, usually obtuse. Style branches as many as loculi, filiform or clavate. Fr. of usually numerous, 1-seeded, sometimes awned, dehiscent or indehiscent mericarps, arranged in a single flat whorl and separating from central axis at maturity.
Flowers small to medium-sized, usually cream or orange, long-pedicelled to subsessile or solitary, clustered or fasciculate in the leaf-axils or arranged in racemes (sometimes subcapitate or subumbellate) or spikes.
Fruit of 5 to many mericarps ultimately separating from the torus, dehiscent at the apex (or rarely at the base) or indehiscent, smooth, transversely ribbed, glabrous or hairy, usually acute, beaked or awned.
Annual or perennial herbs or suffrutices, erect or prostrate, glabrous or pubescent or pilose to densely tomentose or velutinous.
Leaves usually undivided, serrate or crenate-serrate, occasionally 3-lobed, cuneate to cordate at the base, usually petiolate.
Staminal tube dilated at the base, divided at the apex into several to many free filaments; free parts of filaments terete.
Ovary of 5 to many carpels, each with a single pendulous ovule; style terete or subclavate; stigmas capitate or truncate.
Calyx shallow-campanulate to saucer-shaped; lobes ovate or triangular, generally acute to acuminate.
Seeds triangular; cotyledons folded; endosperm scanty or absent.
Petals not clawed.
Epicalyx absent.
