Description:

• Small annual herbs, often viscid-pubescent above, erect, simple or sparsely branched
• Leaves entire, narrow, lower leaves ± rosulate, the rest opposite, sessile; stipules 0
• Inflorescence an umbel-like terminal cyme
• Flowers bisexual, with pedicels deflexed after flowering
• Sepals 5, free, persistent
• Petals 5, entire, toothed, or jagged, white
• Stamens 3-5 or 8-10
• Ovary cylindrical; ovules many; styles 3(4 or 5)
• Fruit a capsule, ovoid or cylindric, longer than sepals, with twice as many teeth as styles, dehiscent by 6(-10) short recurved teeth
• Seeds many, asymmetrically reniform and laterally expanded, peltate, tuberculate; embryo horseshoe-shaped
• x = 10

Nomenclature:

• *Holosteum L.
  • Linnaeus: 88 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 39 (1754)
  • Jussieu: 299 (1789)
  • Pax: 80 (1889)
  • Pax & Hoffmann: 318 (1934)
  • Walters: 136 (1964)
  • Friedrich: 870 (1979)
  • Bittrich: 227 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 3, temperate Eurasia, 1 record from Ethiopia; 1 introduced to South and North America and southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 1: *Holosteum umbellatum L. subsp. umbellatum, recorded from near Sutherland in Western Cape