Flora of North America species comparison

slender to stout, erect to prostrate or decumbent, unbranched to sparsely branched.

erect to decumbent or prostrate.

cauline, alternate;

stipules absent;

sessile or petiolate, petiole usually shorter than blade;

blade margins entire or denticulate.

usually deciduous, usually alternate or opposite, sometimes whorled, simple, usually cauline, sometimes basal and forming rosettes;

stipules present, intrapetiolar, usually caducous, relatively small, or absent (tribes Epilobieae and Onagreae);

sessile or subsessile to petiolate;

blade margins usually entire, toothed, or pinnately lobed, rarely bipinnately lobed.

usually racemes or spikes, rarely panicles;

buds erect or pendent.

axillary, flowers solitary, leafy spikes, racemes, or panicles.

bisexual, usually actinomorphic, often protandrous;

floral tube deciduous (with sepals, petals, and stamens) after anthesis, usually with basal nectary and a ring of hairs inside;

sepals 4, often pink to purplish red, usually connate to tip in bud, reflexed singly, in pairs, or all together to 1 side at anthesis;

petals 4, usually lavender or pink to dark reddish purple, pale yellow or white, [rarely blue (C. tenella)], often spotted, flecked or streaked with red, purple, or white;

stamens 8, in 2 equal or unequal series, or 4 in 1 series, filaments filiform or expanded distally, sometimes subtended by hairy scales, anthers basifixed, often with short acute sterile tip, pollen cream, yellow, blue-gray, lavender, or red, shed singly;

ovary 4-locular, stigma 4-lobed, commissural, lobes receptive only on dry, unicellular-papillose inner surfaces.

usually bisexual, (protandrous in Chamaenerion, Clarkia, Epilobium, [and most species of Lopezia]; protogynous in Circaea and Fuchsia), sometimes unisexual (gynodioecious or dioecious, [subdioecious]), usually actinomorphic, sometimes zygomorphic, (2–)4(–7)-merous;

perianth and androecium epigynous;

sepals persistent after anthesis (in Ludwigia), or all flower parts deciduous after anthesis;

floral tube present or absent in Chamaenerion, Ludwigia, [and most species of Lopezia];

sepals usually green or red, rarely pink or purple, valvate;

petals present, rarely absent, often fading darker with age, imbricate or convolute, sometimes clawed;

nectary present;

stamens 2 times as many as sepals and in 2 series, antisepalous set usually longer, rarely all equal (Chamaenerion), or as many as sepals, [in Lopezia reduced to 2 or 1 plus 1 sterile staminode];

filaments distinct;

anthers usually versatile, sometimes basifixed, dithecal, polysporangiate, with tapetal septa, sometimes also with parenchymatous septa, opening by longitudinal slits, pollen grains united by viscin threads, (2 or)3(–5)-aperturate, shed singly or in tetrads or polyads;

ovary inferior, usually with as many carpels and locules as sepals, rarely 1 or 2 (Circaea and Gayophytum), septa sometimes thin or absent at maturity;

placentation axile or parietal;

style 1, stigma 1, with as many lobes as sepals or clavate to globose, papillate or not, and wet with free-running secretions to dry without the secretions;

ovules 1 to numerous per locule, in 1 or several rows or clustered, anatropous, bitegmic.

a capsule, elongate, straight or curved, cylindrical, fusiform, or subclavate, often 4-angled (shallowly to deeply 4- or 8-grooved) or terete, loculicidal, often tardily dehiscent, sometimes with sterile beak, rarely short, indehiscent and nutlike (C. heterandra);

sessile or pedicellate.

a loculicidal capsule or indehiscent berry or nutlike.

usually numerous, rarely (C. heterandra) 1 or 2, usually angled, cubic, or elongate to spindle-shaped, often with crest of elongated cells, scaly or minutely tuberculate.

smooth or sculptured, sometimes with a coma or wings, with straight, oily embryo, 4-nucleate embryo sac, endosperm absent.