Synonyms: Euploca APNI*
Description: Annual or perennial herbs, glabrous or hairy.
Leaves alternate, sessile or petiolate.
Inflorescence terminal, cymes with or without bracts; flowers sessile or pedicellate. Sepals 5, usually fused only at the very base. Corolla actinomorphic, ± cylindrical with spreading lobes, 5-lobed. Stamens included; anthers subsessile, often mucronate or acuminate with the tips free or cohering and sometimes projecting from the tube. Ovary 4-lobed; style short or long with a conical stigma, rarely exceeding the anthers.
Fruit of 4, sometimes fewer, mericarps which fall at maturity.
Distribution and occurrence: World: c. 300 species, tropical to temperate regions. Australia: c. 78 species (75 species endemic, 3 species naturalised), all mainland States.
Sometimes placed in family Heliotropiaceae.
Text by Peter G. Wilson
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Plant glabrous | Heliotropium curassavicum |
| Plant hairy | 2 |
| 2 | Corolla throat glabrous | 3 |
| Corolla throat hairy
Back to 1 | 5 |
| 3 | Sepals fused for much of their length | Heliotropium supinum |
| Sepals free for much of their length
Back to 2 | 4 |
| 4 | Leaves with margins undulate and revolute; style longer than the stigma | Heliotropium asperrimum |
| Leaves with margins not both undulate and revolute; style shorter than the stigma
Back to 3 | Heliotropium europaeum |
| 5 | Leaves linear; mericarps 4; flowers white | 6 |
| Leaves elliptic or lanceolate; mericarps 2; flowers purple
Back to 2 | Heliotropium amplexicaule |
| 6 | Hairs on lower surface of leaves spreading to ascending | Heliotropium brachygyne |
| Hairs on lower surface of leaves appressed
Back to 5 | Heliotropium moorei |
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