Annual or perennial herbs, undershrubs or shrubs, pubescent, glabrescent. Leaves petiolate, stipulate, with or without lobes. Flowers usually axillary, solitary, or in fascicles or occasionally in racemes or panicles by the reduction of leaves, pedicellate. Epicalyx segments 5-16, free or fused. Calyx 5-lobed or toothed. Corolla of various colour, commonly red, pink or yellow, rarely white or purple. Staminal column with many filaments. Carpels 5; styles 10; stigmas capitate. Fruit discoid to globose, schizocarp; mericarps 5, indehiscent, glabrous or pubescent, with or without wings, carinate, reticulately veined, echinate, horny or smooth. Seed 1 in each mericarps, glabrous or hairy, reniform.