| General Information |
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| Distribution | Epilobium is the largest genus in the Onagraceae, with 165 species (185 taxa) distributed on all continents, except Antarctica.
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Habit
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Perennial or tap-rooted annual herbs; stems erect to ascending or decumbent, strigillose, glandular, villous, or glabrous, often with raised hairy lines descending from leaf axils, simple to well-branched; annual stems with peeling epidermis near base, the perennials producing rosettes, fleshy decussate turions, soboles, or stolons, the last sometimes tipped with turions, rarely woody at base.
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Leaves
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Leaves opposite and decussate below inflorescence or only at base and alternate distally, subsessile to petiolate; the blades lanceolate to oblong or ovate, sometimes to sublinear, lower ones obovate; stipules absent.
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Flowers
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Flowers actinomorphic or rarely zygomorphic, the latter with upper petals flared to right angle with floral tube, lower ones parallel with it, in spikes, racemes, or panicles, or solitary in leaf axils, pedicellate to sessile, floral tube short or elongate and then slightly bulbous at base, usually with hairs, scales, or ring of tissue within, deciduous (with sepals, petals, and stamens) after anthesis, nectary at base of tube, sepals 4, green or rarely colored, erect to spreading, petals 4, rose-purple to white, rarely cream-yellow, or rarely orange-red (then sepals and floral tube also colored), apically notched, stamens 8, in two unequal series, anthers versatile, rarely basifixed, pollen shed in tetrads or rarely singly, ovary with 4 locules, stigma entire and clavate to capitate, or deeply 4-lobed, the lobes commissural, receptive only on inner surfaces, the surface dry with multicellular papillae.
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Fruit
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Fruit a loculicidal capsule, usually narrowly cylindrical, terete to sharply quadrangular, splitting to base with intact central column or rarely splitting only on upper third with central column disintegrating.
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Seeds
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Seeds many or rarely 1-8 per locule, in 1 (2) rows per locule or very rarely forming a single row in capsule by dissolution of median partition, sometimes constricted near micropylar end, with persistent tuft of hairs at chalazal end, or in some species lacking tuft of hairs.
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Chromosomes
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Chromosome numbers: n = 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 30; x = 18.
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Notes
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FNA
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