Alternative names: Not Applicable

Description:
Annual or perennial herbs or shrubs or climbers with alternate or opposite simple exstipulate leaves.

Flowers in cymes or umbels, bisexual, regular; perianth in 1 whorl, the lower part (sometimes called the anthocarp) persistent and becoming hardened and falling off with the fruit so as to resemble a pericarp, the upper 5-10-lobed petaloid part almost undivided and deciduous, plicate or valvate in bud; stamens 1 to many; anthers 2-celled, dorsifixed; ovary, superior, usually stalked, 1-celled, with 1 erect ovule; style simple.

Fruit indehiscent, the true pericarp thin and membranous, enclosed in the anthocarp; embryo straight or curved, with inferior radicle; endosperm mealy.

Distribution:  About 90 genera with 300 species, mainly in warm parts of the Americas. 4 Australian genera. (J. F. Stemmerik (1964) Fl. Males. ser. 1, 6:450-468).

Biology: Bougainvillea spectabilis Willd. is a very commonly grown woody climber with showy reddish bracts enclosing the flowers; it may occasionally persist but is not known to reproduce itself.

Key to Genera:

1. Perianth less than 2 cm long, lacking an involucre
2. Petaloid part of the perianth up to 3 mm long; anthocarp 5-ribbed	BOERHAVIA 1.
2. Petaloid part of the perianth c. 10 mm long; anthocarp 10-ribbed	COMMICARPUS 2.
1. Perianth at least 4 cm long, enclosed at the base by a 8-10 mm long involucre	MIRABILIS 3.

Author: Prepared by J.P. Jessop