Annual or perennial herbs, often with corms, tubers or tuberous roots, sometimes caulescent, rarely undershrubs, shrubs or trees
Leaves
alternate or basal, digitately 3-many-foliolate or pinnately 3-foliolate, rarely 1-foliolate; leaflets entire to obcordate-bilobed; stipules present or 0; peduncles usually axillary
Flowers
single or subumbellate, regular
Sepals
5, imbricate, free or united at base
Petals
hypogynous, convolute with claws united into a tube
Stamens
10, in 2 series; outer smaller and opposite sepals; inner opposite petals
Ovary
5-locular, 5-lobed, with 1-many ovules per locule; styles 5, distinct; stigmas terminal, capitate or penicillate
Capsule
loculicidally dehiscent
Seeds
1-several per locule
x = 5, 6, 7, 8 (9, 10, 11, 13, 17) (polyploidy)
Nomenclature:
Oxalis
L.
Linnaeus: 433 (1753)
Sonder: 313 (1860)
Salter: 1 (1944)
Schreiber: 2 (1966)
Thulin & Moggi: 193 (1993)
Distribution & Notes:
Global
: Species ± 500, cosmopolitan with centres of diversity in South America and South Africa
Southern Africa
: Species ± 270, widespread but mainly in Namibia, Western and Eastern Cape
References:
LINNAEUS, C. 1753.
Species plantarum
. Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm
SALTER, T.M. 1944. The genus
Oxalis
in South Africa.
Journal of South African Botany
, Supplementary volume 1
SCHREIBER, A. 1966.
Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika
63
SONDER, O.W. 1860.
Oxalidaceae
.
Flora capensis
1
THULIN, M. & MOGGI, G. 1993.
Oxalidaceae
.
Flora of Somalia
1
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