Annual or perennial herbs, mostly covered with long, spreading, broad-based hairs. Rosette leaves petiolate, entire or toothed; cauline leaves alternate, widely spaced, sessile. Inflorescences terminal, of 1–few simple monochasial scorpioid cymes; bracts present. Flowers subsessile or pedicellate; sepals 5, partly connate, elongating with age; corolla regular, 5-lobed, funnel-shaped, glabrous except for hairy scales (in Victoria), 5 hair tufts or a ring of hairs in throat, throat open, lobes spreading; stamens included in corolla-tube, anthers oblong, subsessile; ovary 4-lobed, 4-celled, style filiform, about as long as stamens, stigma entire or bifid, capitate. Fruit splitting into 4 mericarps, leaving a gynobase with 4 concave depressions; mericarps ovoid to reniform, hardly beaked, minutely tuberculate, attached by a collar-like basal areole.
