Description :

• Erect to prostrate, annual or perennial herbs or shrublets, rarely with tuber and annual shoots, often minutely papillose
• Leaves alternate, subsucculent, often rhomboid; stipules 0
• Inflorescences of 1-many, mostly axillary, rarely terminal flowers
• Flowers bisexual or sometimes with male flowers terminating inflorescences
• Perianth free, 3-5(-7)-lobed; tube produced above ovary, rarely connate at base
• Stamens few to many, separate or fascicled
• Ovary inferior or semi-inferior, (1-)3-8(9)-locular, with 1 pendulous ovule per locule; styles as many as locules, papillose
• Fruit a nut, terete, winged, ridged, horned or spiny
• Seeds solitary, subreniform with membranous testa, light brown; embryo hook- or horseshoe-shaped; cotyledons linear-oblong, fleshy; endosperm starchy
• x = 8 (high polyploidy)

Classification Notes:

• This genus, together with Tribulocarpus , is sometimes placed in their own family Tetragoniaceae (Friedrich 1955; Takhtajan 1997) on the basis of floral structure, the presence of a floral tube, many stamens, half-inferior to inferior ovaries and indehiscent fruits

Nomenclature:

• Tetragonia L.
  • Linnaeus: 480 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 215 (1754)
  • Fenzl: 460 (1862)
  • Schellenberg: 502 (1913)
  • Adamson: 110 (1955)
  • Jeffrey: 32 (1961)
  • Friedrich: 1 (1967)
  • Bogle: 459 (1970)
  • Gonçalves: 333 (1970)
  • Gonçalves: 553 (1978)
  • Gilbert: 116 (1993)
  • Hartmann: 46 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 50-60, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, temperate South America
• Southern Africa : Species ± 40, Namibia, Free State, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape