Annual or perennial herbs, or large shrubs covered with simple or stellate hairs. Leaves petiolate, palmately, deeply or slightly lobed, angular or rarely entire; stipules usually foliaceous, persistent. Flowers axillary, solitary or fasciculate, or in terminal raceme, showy, pedicellate, bracteate; bracts 3-6, mostly fused. Sepals 5, fused. Petals 5, usually emerginate. Staminal tube branched at the apex. Carpels 6-many; ovary many loculed, each locule I-ovuled; style filiform, branched, enlarged at the base; stigmas decurrent. Fruit-schizocarp, usually indehiscent, central axis projecting above the mericarps. Seed solitary, transversely ribbed or smooth, erect.