Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs, scarcely or nonsucculent, glabrous, or rarely with stellate or glandular hairs, branching monopodially or often sympodially; containing anthocyanin pigments
• Leaves alternate or rarely opposite, often crowded into basal rosettes and false whorls on stem, simple, entire; stipules membranous or 0
• Inflorescence mostly terminal or in seemingly, rarely truly, axillary cymes, or solitary
• Flowers bisexual, regular, hypogynous, very rarely perigynous, sessile or pedicellate, mostly inconspicuous, usually greenish white, sometimes pink or red
• Sepals (4)5, free or rarely connate (Coelanthum), imbricate or quincuncial, persistent, membranous
• Petals 0 or 5-many (small, staminodial in origin)
• Stamens (3)4 or 5(-many), alternisepalous, or if more than 5, in alterni- and episepalous whorls, hypogynous; filaments ± free, but usually connate at base, forming very short cupular tube; anthers tetrasporangiate, dehiscing by longitudinal slits
• Ovary superior, (1)2-5-carpellate and with as many locules as carpels; styles or sessile stigmas as many as carpels, free or rarely united at base; placentation axile, but seemingly basal in some uniovulate carpels; ovules 1-many per locule, anatropous to anacampylotropous, bitegmic
• Fruit a loculicidally dehiscent capsule, rarely separating into 2 indehiscent mericarps or a nutlet, often with persistent calyx
• Seeds generally reniform, sometimes with a small funicular aril; embryo peripheral, curving around hard, starchy perisperm; endosperm scanty or 0

Classification Notes:

• The Molluginaceae is floristically very similar to the Aizoaceae and the Phytolaccaceae, and is either included in the Aizoaceae or accommodated partially in the Aizoaceae and partially in the Phytolaccaceae in most earlier treatments. In more recent classification systems (Endress & Bittrich 1993; Gilbert 1993; Takhtajan 1997), the Molluginaceae is usually treated as a separate family, based on the presence of anthocyanins and absence of betalains, the structure of the androecium and calyx, the funicle length, and the epidermis of the leaves and stems

Nomenclature:

• Molluginaceae
  • Hutchinson: 128 (1926)
  • Pax & Hoffmann: 179 (1934) as Aizoaceae
  • Adamson: 83 (1955)
  • Adamson: 11 (1958)
  • Adamson: 51 (1959)
  • Adamson: 125 (1961)
  • Jeffrey: 1 (1961)
  • Friedrich: 1 (1966)
  • Bogle: 431 (1970)
  • Gonçalves: 522 (1978) as Molluginaceae
  • Endress & Bittrich: 419 (1993)
  • Gilbert: 106 (1993)
  • Eliasson: 5 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera ± 16, species ± 120, distributed primarily in the tropics and subtropics of both hemispheres with a centre of diversity in southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Genera 11, species 90, widespread

References:

• ADAMSON, R.S. 1955. The South African species of Aizoaceae. I. Adenogramma and Polpoda. Journal of South African Botany 21
• ADAMSON, R.S. 1958. The South African species of Aizoaceae. IV. Mollugo, Pharnaceum, Coelanthum and Hypertelis. Journal of South African Botany 24
  
• ADAMSON, R.S. 1959. The South African species of Aizoaceae. VIII. Psammotropha. Journal of South African Botany 25
• ADAMSON, R.S. 1961. The South African species of Aizoaceae. IX. Glinus. Journal of South African Botany 27
• BOGLE, A.L. 1970. The genera of Molluginaceae and Aizoaceae in the southeastern United States. Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 51
• ELIASSON, U.H. 1996. Molluginaceae. Flora of Ecuador 55
• ENDRESS, M.E. & BITTRICH, V. 1993. Molluginaceae. In K. Kubitzki, J.G. Rohwer & V. Bittrich, The families and genera of vascular plants - dicotyledons 2. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
• FRIEDRICH, H.C. 1966. Molluginaceae. Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika 26
• GILBERT, M.G. 1993. Molluginaceae. Flora of Somalia 1
• GONÇALVES, M.L. 1978. Molluginaceae. Flora zambesiaca 4
• HUTCHINSON, J. 1926. Molluginaceae. The families of flowering plants 1. DICOTYLEDONS. London
• JEFFREY, C. 1961. Aizoaceae. Flora of tropical East Africa. Aizoaceae
• PAX, F. & HOFFMANN, K. 1934. Aizoaceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, edn 2,16c

Resources:

• Key to Molluginaceae genera

• Molluginaceae genera: