Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Coarse annual herbs 3–12 dm tall, freely branching, subglabrous to sparsely hispid.

Stems: Stems erect, branched.

Roots: Greatly thickened taproots.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate or rarely opposite. Blades lyrate–pinnatifid, lower leaves 10–20 cm long. Margins of upper leaves toothed. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in usually bractless, terminal racemes, occasionally solitary. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic or rarely slightly irregular, showy. Calyx of 4 sepals, deciduous, erect, usually oblong, sometimes the inner 2 with gibbous bases that hold the nectar, somewhat saccate at base, 9–10 mm long. Corolla of 4 petals, petals yellow or white. Stamens (2–4)6(–16), tetradynamous, the inner 4 usually in pairs, sometimes connate at base in pairs; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2(4?)-carpellate, usually 2-celled by means of a false, but usually complete septum, rarely 1-celled, sessile or rarely stipitate; ovules 1 to numerous, borne on parietal placentas on replum margin at periphery of ovary wall, campylotropous or occasionally anatropous; style 1, elongate, scarcely narrower than ovary; stigma capitate.

Fruit: Fruit 4–10 seeds; constricted between the seeds when dry. Seeds 2–4; globose; often becoming mucilaginous when wet; endosperm essentially absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: