Common Name: BORAGE FAMILY
Habit: Annual, perennial herb, or shrub, often bristly or sharp-hairy. Stem: prostrate-decumbent to erect. Leaf: basal and/or cauline, simple, generally alternate, sometimes opposite, especially at base. Inflorescence: cymes, arranged singly or in groups of 2--5, generally coiled in flower, generally elongating in fruit. Flower: bisexual, generally radial; sepals 5, free or fused at least at base; corolla 5-lobed, salverform, funnel-shaped, rotate, or bell-shaped, appendages (often called "fornices") 0 or 5 at top of tube, when present often differentially pigmented, alternate stamens; stamens epipetalous; ovary superior, 4-lobed, style 1, entire or minutely 2-lobed (2-branched). Fruit: nutlets 1--4, when > 1, all similar (often called "homomorphic") or 1 or 2 dissimilar in size and/or shape from the others (often called "heteromorphic"), free (fused), smooth to roughened, prickly or bristly or not.
Genera In Family: +- 90 genera, +- 1600--1700 species: mostly temperate, especially western North America, Mediterranean; some cultivated (Borago, Echium, Myosotis, Symphytum). Toxicity: Many genera may be TOXIC from pyrrolizidine alkaloids or accumulated nitrates. Note: Sometimes still treated in broader sense of TJM2 (e.g., APG IV 2016 Bot J Linn Soc 181:1--20), but recent evidence (Luebert et al. 2016) supports segregation, for our flora, of the families Ehretiaceae, Heliotropiaceae, Hydrophyllaceae, Lennoaceae, and Namaceae.
eFlora Treatment Author: Michael G. Simpson, C. Matt Guilliams, Kristen Hasenstab-Lehman & Ronald B. Kelley
Scientific Editor: Bruce G. Baldwin, C. Matt Guilliams, Kristen Hasenstab-Lehman, David J. Keil, Ronald B. Kelley, Robert W. Patterson, Thomas J. Rosatti & Michael G. Simpson

Common Name: PECTOCARYA, COMBSEED
Habit: Annual. Stem: 2--40 cm, strigose, breaking at nodes or not. Leaf: generally alternate, generally 0.5--4 cm, +- linear, strigose to sharp-bristled. Inflorescence: bracted or not; pedicel in fruit generally free from nutlets, generally recurved. Flower: basal cleistogamous flowers generally 0; calyx generally < fruit, lobes free, not arched over 1 nutlet, with hooked or straight bristles, in fruit +- equal or, if unequal, upper 2 > others; corolla funnel-shaped, white, limb 0.5--2.5 mm diam, appendages white or yellow; style attached to receptacle, unbranched, generally persistent, stigma 1, head-like. Fruit: nutlets generally 4, generally paired, often dissimilar in shape, ornamentation, margin width, spreading, 1--4.5 mm, generally compressed, often laterally winged, wings sometimes toothed, marginal bristles straight or hooked at tip.
Etymology: (Greek: comb nut, from bristly to dentate nutlet margins of some species) Note: Flowers generally of 1 kind with observable white corolla occurring on the cauline inflorescence sections, except for Pectocarya heterocarpa, Pectocarya peninsularis, which also produce cleistogamous flowers, without an observable corolla, that occur at stem bases and produce nutlet shapes not represented in the diagnostic key. Pectocarya pusilla now treated as Gruvelia pusilla.
eFlora Treatment Author: C. Matt Guilliams & Ronald B. Kelley
Unabridged Reference: Veno 1979 Ph.D. Dissertation Univ CA Los Angeles; Guilliams et al. 2013 Aliso 31:1--13.