Description:

• Tall annual herbs, with erect, villous stems
• Leaves: radical ones spatulate, cauline ones opposite and usually linear; stipules 0
• Inflorescences terminal or axillary lax dichasia, or flowers usually solitary
• Flowers bisexual, conspicuous, long-pedicelled, white, pink or purple
• Calyx tube prominently 10-ribbed, with 5 narrow spreading teeth as long as or longer than tube, coriaceous, campanulate
• Petals 5, often shorter than calyx; limb entire, gradually tapering into claw
• Stamens 10, the 5 opposite the petals sometimes adnate to claw
• Disc basin-shaped, lobed on margin
• Ovary 1-locular, sometimes 3-locular towards base; ovules many on free-central placenta; styles (4)5, hairy, alternisepalous, long, linear, pubescent
• Fruit a capsule (4)5-valved
• Seeds many, reniform with hard, dark brown to black testa, tuberculate
• x = 12 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Agrostemma L.
  • Linnaeus: 435 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 198 (1754)
  • Jussieu: 302 (1789)
  • Candolle: 386 (1824)
  • Sonder: 129 (1860)
  • Pax: 70 (1889)
  • Burtt Davy: 150 (1926)
  • Chater: 157 (1964)
  • Henderson & Anderson: 126 (1966)
  • Zohary: 80 (1966)
  • Friedrich: 1175 (1979)
  • Bittrich: 233 (1993)
  • Greuter: 106 (1995)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 2, native of Mediterranean and temperate Eurasia; noxious weeds of fields, now widely dispersed
• Southern Africa: *Agrostemma githago L., introduced, has become naturalised