Description :

• Much-branched annual herbs, often forming mats, usually simply or stellately pubescent (rarely ± glabrous)
• Leaves alternate or in false whorls, narrowly elliptic to ovate, ± fleshy; stipules 0
• Inflorescence a dense, sessile to short-pedunculate, seemingly axillary cyme
• Flowers few to many
• Sepals 5, free, often yellowish on inner surface, margins hyaline, tip mucronate, persistent
• Petals 0-8(-20), usually splitting at apex
• Stamens 3-20, alternate with and shorter than sepals, hypogynous; filaments filiform; anthers versatile
• Ovary 3-5-locular; ovules many per locule, anacampylotropous; styles 0; stigmas 3(-5), sessile, of hyaline papillae, persistent
• Fruit an ovoid, loculicidal capsule
• Seeds many, reniform, granular or smooth, with a long filiform aril; cotyledons oblong, fleshy; endosperm starchy
• x = 9

Nomenclature:

• Glinus L.
  • Linnaeus: 463 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 208 (1754)
  • Sonder: 136 (1860)
  • Hutchinson & Dalziel: 114 (1927)
  • Keay: 135 (1954)
  • Adamson: 125 (1961)
  • Jeffrey: 11 (1961)
  • Pitot: 769 (1965)
  • Friedrich: 6 (1966)
  • Bogle: 441 (1970)
  • Gonçalves: 537 (1978)
  • Endress & Bittrich: 424 (1993)
  • Gilbert: 110 (1993)
  • Eliasson: 6 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 13, pantropical with 2 species reaching temperate regions as introduced weeds
• Southern Africa : Species 3, natural and widespread, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Free State, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Northern Cape; * Glinus lotoides L. var. lotoides , widespread as a naturalised weed