Description :

• Annual, biennial or perennial herbs, rarely geophytes or shrublets, sometimes caespitose; plants often monoecious or rarely gynodioecious or dioecious
• Leaves opposite, entire, sometimes slightly connate at base; stipules 0
• Inflorescences dichasial or monochasial, sometimes ± capitate, sometimes flowers solitary
• Flowers bisexual or unisexual; anthophore present
• Calyx : tube 10-30(-60)-nerved, sometimes strongly inflated, with 5 short lobes, often glandular
• Petals 5, arising on margin of disc, with long claw and entire to deeply divided limb, often with 2 scales at base
• Stamens 10, in male and bisexual flowers, sometimes abnormally reduced, arising on margin of disc, the 5 opposite petals sometimes attached to claw
• Disc columnar, often pubescent
• Ovary on long gynophore adnate to disc, usually 1-locular, sometimes 3-locular towards base; ovules many on free central placenta; styles (2-)5, usually 3, as long as or longer than ovary, often glandular
• Fruit a capsule, opening usually by twice as many teeth as styles present
• Seeds many, ± reniform, compressed, reticulate or tuberculate, sometimes with 2 wings; embryo ± annular
• x = 12 (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Silene L.
  • Linnaeus: 416 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 193 (1754)
  • Jussieu: 302 (1789)
  • Sonder: 125 (1860)
  • Pax: 70 (1889)
  • Burtt Davy: 149 (1926)
  • Pax & Hoffmann: 343 (1934)
  • Wild: 350 (1961)
  • Chater & Walters: 158 (1964)
  • Henderson & Anderson: 138 (1966)
  • Podlech: 4 (1967)
  • Bittrich: 233 (1993)
• Melandrium Mertens & Koch
  • Mertens & Koch: 274 (1812)
  • Adamson: 399 (1950)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 700, in Eurasia (± 600 species), Africa (± 92 species), North America (± 50 species)
• Southern Africa : Species ± 19, of which 3 are naturalised, widespread in all provinces and countries except Botswana