Perennial herbs, mostly covered with long, spreading, broad-based hairs. Rosette leaves petiolate, entire; cauline leaves alternate, widely spaced, sessile, reducing toward inflorescence. Inflorescences terminal and upper-axillary, of several simple short, dense, monochasial, scorpioid cymes; at least the lower flowers with bracts. Flowers pedicellate; sepals 5, connate basally, elongating with age; corolla regular, 5-lobed, funnel-shaped, glabrous except for hairs on the 5 tongue-like scales in throat, lobes spreading; stamens included in corolla-tube, anthers ellipsoid, subsessile; ovary 4-lobed, 4-celled, style filiform, about as long as stamens, stigma entire, capitate. Fruit splitting into 4 mericarps, leaving a gynobase with 4 concave depressions; mericarps ovoid, longitudinally ridged, reticulate, minutely tuberculate, attached by a small funicle within a saccate areole.
