Herbs or small shrubs, rarely arborescent. Stipules absent. Leaves spirally alternate, usually in a basal rosette, rarely opposite or whorled, simple; leaf blade veins (1 or)3-11, arcuate. Inflorescences spikes, rarely racemes or 1-flowered, pedunculate, each flower with 1 bract. Flowers small, protogynous, bisexual, rarely polygamous or unisexual. Calyx usually 4-parted, persistent, segments imbricate. Corolla scarious or membranous, gamopetalous, actinomorphic or rarely zygomorphic, (3 or)4-lobed; lobes imbricate. Stamens (1 or 2 or)4, inserted on corolla tube, alternate with lobes; anthers free, versatile, with an apical appendage, thecae 2 and parallel. Pistil consisting of 2 carpels; ovary superior, (1 or)2-loculed, axile or rarely basal; style 1, filiform, mostly longitudinally stigmatic. Fruit a pyxis, rarely an indehiscent capsule or nutlet, with 1 to numerous seeds. Seeds minute; cotyledons narrow; endosperm fleshy.

Li Zhenyu. 2002. Plantaginaceae. In: Hu Chiachi, ed., Fl. Reipubl. Popularis Sin. 70: 318-345.

Two genera and more than 210 species: cosmopolitan; one genus and 22 species (three endemic, four introduced) in China.

(Authors: Li Zhenyu (李振宇), Wei Lai (魏来)1; Ronald K. Hoggard)