Description:

• Annual, perennial or monocarpic herbs, usually stemless, or rarely subshrubs, with uneven development of cotyledons
• Leaves solitary, of cotyledonary origin, growing from meristem at base, or few or rosulate, opposite, rarely alternate; stipules 0
• Flowers bisexual, irregular, usually in open pedunculate cymes, with flowers of each dichotomy paired and opening serially, sometimes reduced to 1 or 2; peduncles apparently arising from junction of midrib and leaf stalk (hypocotyl) or axillary
• Bracts small, rarely foliaceous, very rarely 0
• Calyx tubular and 5-lobed or divided to the base
• Corolla tubular, 5-lobed, often ± bilabiate; limb oblique or rarely subequal, imbricate, with 2 posterior lobes often inside
• Stamens 2, anterior, arising from corolla tube, usually included; anthers bithecate with thecae diverging, rarely parallel, usually cohering face to face, dehiscing longitudinally; staminodes 1 or 3
• Nectary/disc annular or shortly cupular, rarely oblique or 0
• Ovary superior, unilocular or apparently bilocular, usually slender, terete, rarely ovoid or conical, with 2 parietal placentas ± intruding and bifurcating, sometimes uniting centrally; ovules many; style simple; stigma variable
• Fruit a capsule, often cylindrical, sometimes conical, spirally twisted, splitting loculicidally into 2, later sometimes 4 spiral valves
• Seeds many, minute, ± ellipsoid; testa brown, reticulate or verruculose; endosperm ± 0
• x = 16 (15)

Nomenclature:

• Gesneriaceae
  • Clarke: 437 (1904)
  • Hilliard & Burtt: 43 (1988)
  • Mabberley: 299 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera ± 139, species ± 2900, cosmopolitan but mainly Old World, especially China, mostly tropical and subtropical
• Southern Africa: Genus 1, species ± 45 (see Scrophulariaceae for Charadrophila Marloth)

References:

• CLARKE, C.B. 1904. Gesneriaceae. Flora capensis 4, 2
• HILLIARD, O.M. & BURTT, B.L. 1988. Gesneriaceae. Flora zambesiaca 8, 3
• MABBERLEY, D.J. 1997. The plant-book, edn 2. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Resources:

• Gesneriaceae genus: Streptocarpus