Balsaminaceae

Abstract

Annual or perennial herbs, sometimes with tubers or rhizomes, occasionally subshrubs; stems erect or procumbent, succulent, rarely woody below. Leaves spirally arranged, rarely decussate or verticillate, simple, petiolate or sessile, pinnately veined, margins crenate, dentate or serrate, teeth or crenations apiculate, the lowermost often gland-tipped, petiole often with short capitate glands or fimbriae, rarely with extra-floral sectaries. Flowering shoots truncate, proliferating; inflorescences axillary racemes or pseudoumbels, often epedunculate and fascicled in leaf axils; flowers zygomorphic, usually resupinate through 180°, not resupinate in some Chinese Impatiens; sepals 3 or 5, free, the lower one (by resupination) larger, navicular to saccate, usually tapering or abruptly constricted into a nectariferous spur; petals 5, dorsal petal free, flat or cucullate, often crested dorsally, lower 4 petals free or united into lateral pairs; stamens 5, connate into a ring surrounding ovary and stigma, ripening and usually falling off in one piece before the maturity of the stigma; ovary superior, syncarpous, 5-locular with axile placentation; ovules 5-numerous, anatropous, bitegmic or unitegmic, tenuinucellate; style 1, very short or ± absent; stigmas 1–5. Fruit a berry or a loculicidal fleshy explosive capsule; seeds exalbuminous, seed coat smooth, warted or with simple hairs.