Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs or undershrubs, creeping to erect, succulent, glabrous; stems several from a short tap root, often reddish; branches rarely rooting
• Leaves opposite to alternate, sessile or petiolate, succulent; stipules 0, but with membranes at base of petiole
• Flowers bisexual, solitary, sessile or pedunculate, axillary, with 2 basal bracteoles
• Perianth 5-lobed; lobes triangular, with long unifacial dorsal appendages
• Stamens 5-many, free or connate at base, arising from mouth of calyx tube; filaments filiform or subulate; anthers small, often reddish
• Ovary superior, 2-5-locular; ovules many per locule, anacampylotropous; placentation axile; styles 2-5, linear, erect; stigma longitudinal, papillose
• Fruit a circumscissile membranous capsule, enclosed within persistent perianth with ± conical top
• Seeds many, small, round to reniform, smooth, black, arillate; embryo annular; cotyledons oblong, fleshy; endosperm soft, starchy
• x = 8, 9 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Sesuvium L.
  • Linnaeus: 1058 (1759)
  • Jeffrey: 235 (1960)
  • Jeffrey: 20 (1961)
  • Adamson: 244 (1962)
  • Friedrich: 124 (1970)
  • Bogle: 450 (1970)
  • Gonçalves: 514 (1978)
  • Hartmann: 45 (1993)
• Diplochonium Fenzl
  • Fenzl: 461 (1862)
  • Sonder: 473(1862)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 12, tropics and subtropics of both hemispheres, but mainly African, inhabiting saline sandy dunes and beaches, riverbeds, marshes
• Southern Africa : Species ± 4, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province and Northern Cape