Boerhavia
Content
Description
Annual or perennial herbs, sometimes suffrutescent or subscandent; glabrous or pubescent. Leaves opposite or subopposite, those of a pair often unequal, large leaves often alternating; petiolate; blade entire, sinuate or undulate, raphides prominent, linear, base sometimes inequilateral. Inflorescences varying from a terminal or axillary panicle to paniculate capitula, or flowers arranged in racemes, unequally pedicellate umbels or cymes, flowers rarely solitary; branches often subtended by a small hyaline bract; pedicellate or subsessile; bracteoles 1-3, minute, hyaline. Flowers bisexual, small; perianth corolla-like, campanulate, subrotate or funnelform, lower part constricted above ovary, persistent, upper part (limb) shallowly 5-lobed, flaring, deciduous; stamens 1-3(-5), exserted or included, filaments free or connate below, pollen forate, 2(-3)-nucleate; ovary shortly stipitate, ovule anacampylotropous, style filiform, stigma 1, capitate, subexserted to exserted. Anthocarps shortly stipitate, clavate, fusiform or subellipsoid, 3-5(-10)-angled, -ribbed or -winged, green, with stipitate, viscous glands on ribs (eglandular in B. erecta, not in the Guianas), and streaks of white, linear superficial raphides in furrows between ribs; seed with thin testa adherent to pericarp, embryo with unequal cotyledons curved inward, enclosing scant, mealy endosperm, radicle elongate, descending.