Salient features: Bristly herbs, stems cylindrical, leaves alternate, inflorescence helicoid cymes, flowers pentamerous, actinomorphic, carpels 2, ovary 4-lobed, style gynobasic, fruit with 4 nutlets.

Major genera: Cordia (300 species), Heliotropium (250) Tournefortia (240), Onosma (140), Myosotis (90), Cynoglossum (75) and Ehretia (75).

Description: Herbs, shrubs or trees (Cordia), sometimes lianas, inner phloem lacking, hairs with basal cystolith and often calcified or silicified and as such plants bristly, rough to touch. Leaves alternate, simple, entire, venation pinnate, reticulate, stipules absent. Inflorescence usually of helicoid cymes, rarely scorpioid. Flowers bisexual, actinomorphic, rarely zygomorphic (Echium), hypogynous, pentamerous. Calyx with 5 sepals, free or slightly connate at base, persistent. Corolla with 5 petals, united, rotate, tubular or funnel shaped, usually plicate. Androecium with 5 stamens, epipetalous, inserted in corolla tube, filaments free, bithecous, anthers introrse, dehiscence longitudinal, pollen grains tricolporate or multiporate, filaments often with nectar discs at base. Gynoecium with 2 united carpels, ovary superior, deeply 4-lobed, bilocular, axile placentation, becoming 4-locular due to false septa, style 1, terminal or gynobasic, stigma 1 or bilobed, capitate or truncate, ovary seated on a nectary. Fruit a drupe with one 4-seeded, two 2-seeded or four 1-seeded pits or schizocarp with four 1-seeded nutlets; seeds with embryo straight or curved. Pollination mostly by insects. Drupaceous fruits are dispersed by birds, whereas corky ones (Argusia, Cordia) are carried away by water.

Economic importance: Several species of Heliotropium (heliotrope), Mertensia (virgin bluebells), Myosotis (forget-me-not), Cordia (Geiger tree), Cynoglossum (hound’s tongue) and Pulmonaria (lungwort) are grown as ornamentals. Several species such as Borago officinalis (borage), Symphytum officinalis (comphrey) and Lithospermum spp. (pucoon) have been used as medicinal herbs. Alkanna tinctoria (alkanet) is a source of red dye used to stain wood and marble and to colour medicines, wines and cosmetics.

Expected genera in India