Home Flora of Panama (WFO)
Name Search
Markup OCR Documents

Project Name Data (Last Modified On 5/8/2013)

Flora Data (Last Modified On 5/8/2013)
Contributor DANIEL F. AUSTIN
Description Herbs, or less commonly shrubs, vines, or small trees, perennial or annual. Leaves alternate or opposite, simple or pinnately-compound; blades pinnately- veined; exstipulate. Inflorescences axillary or terminal, solitary or in small cymose clusters of dense heads. Flowers medium to large, bisexual, regular or irregular and bilabiate; sepals 5, synsepalous, regular or sometimes irregular, herbaceous or with herbaceous lobes and membranaceous sinuses, imbricate or valvate; petals 5, sympetalous, regular or rarely bilabiate, hypogynous, alternate with sepals, contorted in bud; stamens 5, epipetalous, alternate with the corolla lobes, the point of insertion varying, the anthers 2-loculed, dehiscing longi- tudinally; ovary superior, inserted on a basal, often 5-lobed disc, (2-)3(-4)- loculed, the placentation axile, the style terminal, simple, filiform, the stigma (2-)3(-4)-lobed. Fruits capsular, mostly loculicidal; seeds 1 to many, the endo- sperm copious and the embryo straight or slightly curved, the seed coat fre- quently becoming mucilaginous when wet.
Habit Herbs, or less commonly shrubs, vines, or small trees
Distribution A New World family with 18 genera and about 316 species. Mostly found in temperate and subtropical regions, although some genera are confined to tropical montane areas. Two genera occur in Panama: Cobaea and Loeselia.
Key a. Lianas with alternate, pinnately-compound leaves, the terminal leaflet modi- fied into a tendril; flowers solitary, terminating long peduncles; corolla 15-20 mm long, regular, campanulate -1. Cobaea aa. Shrubs with opposite, simple leaves; flowers clustered in leaf axils, peduncles short; corolla 8-10 mm long, irregular, salverform or funnelform -2. Loeselia