Physalis

Annual or perennial herbs, glabrous or more often clothed with simple or stellate hairs. Leaves entire, toothed, sinuate or more rarely pinnatifid. Flowers small, solitary, axillary, violet, yellow or white, often purple at base. Calyx campanulate or pyramidal, 5-lobed shortly or to the middle, enlarged in fruit, inflated, membranous, 5-angled or prominently 10-ribbed, often 5-auricled at base; teeth conniving. Corolla subrotate or very widely campanulate, 5-angled or shortly and widely 5-lobed. Stamens 5, arising near corolla base; filaments filiform; anthers erect, usually shorter than filaments; thecae parallel, dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary 2-locular; style filiform; stigma shortly 2-lobed; ovules many. Fruit a globose berry, enclosed in and much smaller than inflated calyx. Seeds few or many, smooth or slenderly tuberculate-rugose, compressed; embryo near margin, curved; cotyledons semiterete. x = 12 (aneuploids, polyploidy)