Annual, biennial or perennial herbs, very rarely shrubs or small trees, glabrous or nearly glabrous, usually with milky or coloured latex. Leaves alternate or in basal rosette, rarely opposite or whorled, exstipulate, mostly dissected, pinnately or palmately lobed. Inflorescences racemes, panicles, dichasia, psudoumbels or solitary terminal. Flowers usually showy and large, bisexual, actinomorphic, usually 2-merous, rarely 3- or 4-merous, hypogynous. Sepals 2 or 3, free, imbricate, falling off as flower expands. Petals 4-6 (rarely 8-12 or absent) in 1-2(-3) whorls, free, imbricate, sometimes crumpled in bud. Nectaries absent. Stamens usually indefinite in many whorls, free; anthers bithecous, dehiscence longitudinal; filaments filiform to winged, often coloured. Carpels 2-many, syncarpous, ovary superior, unilocular, rarely bilocular, usually with 2-many incomplete locules, ovules numerous on parietal placentas; style 1 or absent; stigmas as many as carpels. Fruit mostly a capsule, dehiscing by pores or valves; seeds many, small.

46 genera and about 775 species

Argemone mexicana

Eschscholtzia californica

Papaver rhoeos