Corchorus

Herbs or small shrubs, sometimes with annual stems from a woody rootstock, with simple or stellate hairs. Leaves serrate, dentate, repand or lobed with basal teeth often prolonged into long setaceous points; petioles usually more densely pubescent on upper side; stipules lateral, usually setaceous or subacute. Flowers in bracteate, pedunculate cymes +/- opposed to leaves, or peduncle obsolete. Sepals 4 or 5, usually narrow, often caudate at apex. Petals as long as sepals, obovate, oblanceolate or linear, yellow, usually with a short basal claw ciliolate on margin. Stamens 7-many, filamentous, borne on a very short, glabrous androgynophore which is annular at apex with stamens arising between annulus and ovary. Ovary 2-5-locular, with 2 to many axile ovules in each locule; style glabrous; stigma cup-shaped or slightly 2-6-lobed or capitate-fimbriate. Fruit an elongated or subglobose capsule, glabrous or hairy, smooth, bristly, or prickly, straight or curved, loculicidally 2-5-valved, sometimes with transverse septa within, 2-many-seeded. Seeds dark brown or black, pendulous or horizontal, quadrate, ellipsoid, cylindric or irregularly hemispherical; embryo usually curved; cotyledons flat; endosperm fleshy. x = 7 (polyploidy).