Annual or perennial herbs, with milky or yellowish (rarely whitish) sap. Leaves toothed or pinnately lobed, ± hairy, sometimes hispid or stiffly bristly. Inflorescence generally solitary terminal or axillary, often on long peduncles. Flowers often showy and large with caducous sepals and petals; peduncles often elongated; buds drooping. Sepals 2(-3), free, soon deciduous, usually ovate-orbicular, often hispid. Petals 4(-6), crumpled in bud, usually ± orbicular with little or no claw, usually red, pink, yellow or white. Stamens indefinite with anthers dehiscing outward; filaments linear or dilated, often dark coloured; anthers small, often oblong. Stigmas 4-20, borne on a disc, sessile; disc margin wavy to deeply dissected, with as many lobes as the stigma rays. Ovules numerous on parietal placentae. Fruit many seeded capsule, globose, ellipsoid, subcylindrical-globose, dehiscing by pores just beneath the persistent stigmatic disc. Seeds small or minute, kidney-shaped and pitted or very finely reticulated.