Description :

• Perennial herbs, sometimes monoecious
• Leaves mainly radical and few cauline, often long-petiolate, mainly tripartite or palmately partite, rarely pinnate
• Flowers unisexual or bisexual, sometimes both kinds in same inflorescence, in simple or compound, bracteate umbels, rarely umbels in racemes
• Calyx with lanceolate lobes; lobes free in bisexual flowers and somewhat connate in unisexual flowers
• Petals ± emarginate and strongly inflexed
• Disc flat or saucer-shaped
• Filaments strongly inflexed, longer than petals
• Fruit covered with hooked spines; styles terete, rarely thickened; carpophore 0; mericarps broad or narrow on inner face, smooth or sometimes setose or granulate, oil ducts 5, below veins or with 2 oil ducts on inner face
• Seeds flat or swollen and halfmoon-shaped, often deeply concave or grooved on face
• x = 8 or 4 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Sanicula L.
  • Linnaeus: 235 (1753)
  • Sonder: 533 (1862)
  • Cannon: 565 (1978)
  • Burtt: 245 (1991)
  • Pimenov & Leonov: 99 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 39, more or less cosmopolitan
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Sanicula elata D.Don, widespread along the eastern parts and along the Cape coastal region to Cape Peninsula