Description :

• Perennial or rarely annual herbs or shrubs, with erect or ascending stems, unarmed, ± hairy
• Leaves basal or alternate, petiolate, imparipinnate; pinnae serrated; stipules conspicuous, sheathing, adnate to petiole
• Inflorescences densely capitate or spicate at ends of usually long slender and ± branched stems
• Flowers bisexual or occasionally upper flowers in each inflorescence pistillate, small
• Calyx : tube turbinate, mouth contracted, persistent, sometimes 4-angled and tuberculate; bracts and 2 membranous bracteoles at base, sometimes 0; lobes 4(5 or 6), caducous, petaloid, imbricate, greenish, whitish or reddish, spreading
• Petals 0
• Stamens 4-30, inserted at mouth of calyx tube; filaments elongate, slender, exserted; anthers short
• Disc lining calyx tube and closing its mouth
• Gynoecium of 1-3 free carpels; ovules solitary in each, pendulous; style filiform, long or short; stigmas brush-like, reddish
• Fruit an achene, usually solitary, enclosed in dry, corky, angular or ± winged, tuberculate calyx tube
• x = 7 (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Sanguisorba L.
  • Linnaeus: 116 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 146 (1754)
  • Gaertner: 161, t. 32 (1788) ( Pimpinella )
  • Jussieu: 336 (1789)
  • Candolle: 593 (1825)
  • Endlicher: 1244 (1840)
  • Focke: 44 (1894)
  • Nordborg: 5 (1966)
  • Nordborg: 1 (1967)
  • Zohary: 14 (1972)
• Poterium L.
  • Linnaeus: 994 (1753) in part
  • Bailey & Bailey: 906 (1977)
• Poteridium Spach
  • Spach: 43 (1846)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 10, mainly temperate regions of the northern hemisphere
• Southern Africa : * Sanguisorba minor Scop. subsp. muricata Briq., partly naturalised, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and Free State