Coarse herbs or shrubs. Leaves simple, exstipulate, alternate, petiolate, and usually serrate or dentate. Flowers axillary in the upper leaves or reduced bracts, usually inverted at anthesis, borne on bibracteolate or* ebracteolate pedicels; hy-panthium obconic to cylindric, adnate to the pistil for at least 4%5 of its length; corolla red, red and yellow, or red tinged with green or white, rarely blue, the tube entire or basally fenestrate, never dorsally cleft; filaments basally distinct and either adnate to the narrow basal portion of the corolla (continental species) or free from it (West Indian species), the anther tube with the opening partially closed by the incurved tips of the 3 longer anthers, the 2 shorter anthers bear-ing a bristly fringe of stiff white hairs. Capsules apically loculicidally dehiscent with a conical apex and either papery or woody walls; corolla, stamens and style withering-persistent; seeds numerous, ovoid or ellipsoid, foveate-reticulate.
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