Description :

• Annual or perennial, terrestrial or epiphytic herbs, erect, repent or scandent; stems soft, brittle, glabrous or pubescent, often succulent, rarely more than 1 m high, sometimes with stout fleshy rhizomes
• Leaves alternate, opposite or verticillate, sometimes peltate, thin to thick and succulent, glabrous or pubescent with simple or branched hairs, 3- or penninerved, palmate or pinnate with yellow or brown pellucid glands; petioles sometimes sheathing; stipules 0
• Inflorescence a spike, terminal or opposite leaves, solitary or several together; bracts sessile, usually peltate
• Flowers bisexual, many, congested or lax, borne on surface or in pit-like depressions of rachis, usually white, cream or green, sessile or shortly pedicellate; floral bracts round or ovate, peltate, glabrous or fimbriate, usually with gland dots
• Stamens 2, borne at base of ovary, soon deciduous; filaments short and fused; anthers subglobose or ellipsoid, with 2 confluent thecae
• Ovary sessile, obtuse or acute; stigma 1, undivided, often penicillate
• Fruit a drupe, sessile or stipitate, rounded or with a small style, with an elongate, straight, bent or hooked beak, smooth or viscid-verruculose; pericarp thin; endocarp slightly hardened
• x = 11 (12) (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Peperomia Ruiz & Pav.
  • Ruiz López & Pavón: 8 (1794)
  • Endlicher: 15 (1847)
  • Candolle: 392 (1869)
  • Bentham: 132 (1880)
  • Engler: 10 (1888)
  • Baker & Wright: 147 (1909)
  • Wright: 489 (1912)
  • Balle: 380 (1942)
  • Yuncker: 1 (1958)
  • Airy Shaw: 871 (1973)
  • Düll: 56 (1973)
  • Van Jaarsveld: 67 (1992)
  • Tebbs: 519 (1993)
  • Diniz: 73 (1996)
  • Verdcourt: 9 (1996)
  • Diniz: 29 (1997)
• Verhuellia Miq.
  • Miquel: 45, 47 (1843-1844)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 1 000, pantropical with its main centres of diversity in tropical South America; 17 species in Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 5: Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, coastal areas of Western and Eastern Cape