Description :

• Perennial herbs with fleshy, tuberous root and slender, leafless scapes
• Leaves basal, arising after flowering, the first formed ones finely dissected or sometimes pinnate with broad, dentate lobes, the later ones variously dissected, usually finely bi- or triternate, segments dentate
• Flowers in compound umbels; involucre often absent
• Calyx with or without minute teeth
• Petals obovate or elliptic, with long, inflexed apex and keeled inner face
• Disc shortly conical
• Stamens slightly shorter than petals; filaments terete; anthers elliptic
• Styles short
• Fruit small, ovoid, shorter than 4 mm, usually narrowing towards apex, ribbed; mericarps flat on face, convex on back, with 5 prominent ribs; oil ducts 6, 1 in each furrow, 2 on face; carpophore bipartite
• Seeds semiterete

Nomenclature:

• Chamarea Eckl. & Zeyh.
  • Ecklon & Zeyher: 346 (1837)
  • Sonder: 538 (1862), under Carum
  • Burtt: 200, 261 (1991)
  • Pimenov & Leonov: 35 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 5 or more, widespread in the western, central and southern parts and eastwards as far as the Eastern Cape