Description :

• Mostly succulent, annual herbs, rarely undershrubs, usually diffuse or prostrate
• Leaves opposite, glabrous, papillose or hairy, with membranes or stipule-like lobes at base of petioles
• Flowers bisexual, axillary, solitary or in fascicles, cymes or clusters, with 2 bracteoles each
• Perianth 5-lobed; tube short or subelongated and campanulate; lobes small or large, with membranous margins, coloured within, dorsally mucronate
• Stamens 5-many, sometimes unequal, separate or grouped, arising from base of calyx lobes; filament filiform; anthers small, rotund to oblong
• Ovary superior, with 1 carpel, 1-locular; ovules 2-many, campylotropous; placentation basal or parietal; style 1(2), short; stigma longitudinal, papillate
• Fruit a membranous or coriaceous capsule, transversely dehiscent
• Seeds 1 or 2, round-reniform, arillate, reddish brown to black; embryo annular to coiled; cotyledons oblong, fleshy; endosperm starchy
• x = 7, 8, 13 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Trianthema L.
  • Linnaeus: 223 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 105 (1754)
  • Sonder: 598 (1862)
  • Jeffrey: 22 (1961)
  • Friedrich: 131 (1970)
  • Bogle: 453 (1970)
  • Gonçalves: 517 (1978)
  • Hartmann: 45 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 17, cosmopolitan in the tropics and subtropics
• Southern Africa : Species 6, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and Northern Cape