Nicotiana

Herbs or undershrubs, rarely evergreen shrubs or small trees, usually with glutinous hairs. Leaves simple, entire or sinuate. Flowers in terminal panicles or long, unilateral, bracteate or ebracteate racemes, rarely solitary and axillary; white, yellow, greenish or pink. Calyx 5-fid, ovoid or tubular-campanulate. Corolla funnel- or salver-shaped; tube long, cylindrical or slightly ventricose; limb equal or oblique; lobes 5, induplicate, patent. Stamens 5, arising below middle of corolla tube, included or exserted, more or less unequal; filaments filiform; anthers ovoid or oblong, deeply 2-lobed; thecae parallel, dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary 2- or rarely 4-locular; style filiform; stigma dilated, shortly and widely 2-lobed; ovules many. Fruit a 2- or rarely 4-locular capsule, dehiscing to the middle or lower by 2-fid valves. Seeds many, small, scarcely compressed, granular; embryo straight or more or less curved, cotyledons semiterete. x = 6, 8, 9, 10 (5, 7, 11, 19, 23) (aneuploids, high polyploidy, B-chromosomes).