Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Herbs, perennial.

Stems: Stems erect or ascending, 10–40 cm, branched at base, glabrous or sparsely hirsute below.

Roots: Roots elongate, carrotlike.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Mostly on lower part of the stem, lowermost sometimes caducous. Blades spatulate, oblanceolate, elliptic, or linear, 10–40 × 2–8 mm. Surfaces glabrous or sparsely hirsute. Margins sinuate, sparsely serrulate, or entire. Sessile or with petiole up to 7 mm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary, pedicels erect, terminal and sometimes axillary, slender, up to 20 cm. Flowers bisexual (perfect); Hypanthium obovoid or conic, glabrous, 5-nerved or 10-nerved. Calyx of 5 connate sepals, lobes triangular or subulate, tube adnate to ovary. Corolla actinomorphic or, if zygomorphic, then often laterally fenestrate or dorsally cleft, connate, blue, broadly campanulate, 3–12 mm, cleft for 1⁄3–2⁄3 its length; lobes obovate, oblong, or narrowly oblong. Stamens 5, alternate with corolla lobes; anthers coherent, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, coherent but separating after anthesis or connate and forming a tube into which pollen is shed; filaments distinct, dilated into a triangular base, dilated part cilate, attached to the epigynous nectary disk or to base of corolla, rarely adnate to corolla tube. Ovary inferior; 2–5-celled; ovule placentation axile; stigma segments linear, wet or dry, 2–5-lobed, appressed and nonreceptive as the style grows through the anther tube, pushing out the pollen, after which the stigmas spread apart and become receptive; style with as many lobes as cells.

Fruit: Capsules obconic; obovoid; or subglobose; 3–8 mm; 3–locular; loculicidal at apex. Seeds numerous; small; yellow–brown or dark brown; oblong or ellipsoid; slightly compressed; 0.3–0.5 mm; smooth; with a straight; short to spatulate dicotyledonous embryo embedded in oily endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Wastelands; fields; slopes; streams.

Elevation Range: