Source:
SSA
Description:
Annual herbs with regular candelabriform branching, glabrous or sparingly hairy. Leaves alternate, simple, dentate. Flowers solitary, large, white, pinkish or yellow, erect or cernuous. Calyx long, tubular, 5-fid or spathaceous, base often persistent. Corolla funnel-shaped; lobes 5-10, short, broad, often acuminate; limb plicate. Stamens 5, arising near base of corolla tube, included; anthers linear, dehiscing longitudinally, sometimes cohering into a tube. Ovary 2-locular or +/- spuriously 4-celled; style filiform, dilated and 2-lamellate at apex. Fruit a spiny capsule, dehiscing by 4 valves or irregularly, subtended by reflexed enlarged base of calyx. x = 6 (aneuploids, high polyploidy, B-chromosomes-1 report).
Distribution:
Species +/- 8, New World; some cultivated; 3 in sthn Afr., naturalised and widespread.
Classification:
Add new comment