Description:

• Erect, ascending, or sometimes decumbent, perennial, biennial or annual herbs or low shrublets, glabrous to scabrid, usually branching at base
• Leaves sessile, entire, linear to spathulate, chartaceous to ± succulent; stipules subulate, often caducous
• Inflorescences densely and many-flowered spikes or spike-like racemes, elongating
• Flowers bisexual or unisexual and then plants polygamous, subtended by a bract, sessile
• Sepals 4 or 5, persistent, entire, herbaceous, often white-margined
• Petals 2, rarely up to 5 or almost completely abortive, adaxial, free or up to more than half connate, entire or shallowly incised, ± oblong, alternating with posterior sepals, white
• Disc poorly developed or 0
• Stamens (2)3-12(13), adaxial or surrounding ovary, sometimes partly or completely abortive; filaments persistent, glabrous, filiform-subulate, usually slightly monadelphous posteriorly; anthers subglobose-oblong, apex notched, introrsely splitting
• Ovary of 4 or 5 carpels, 1-locular, not completely fused at top, 4 or 5 apical, conical points bearing stigmatic surfaces; ovules 5-15 per placenta, in 2-5 rows
• Fruit an indehiscent capsule, subglobose to ovoid, glabrous or scabridulous, membranous, sessile, gaping at top, slightly inflated, obtusely 4- or 5-angled
• Seeds many, ovoid to subglobose, black or dark brown; testa very glossy and smooth; embryo curved
• x = 8 (6, 7) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Oligomeris Cambess.
  • Cambessèdes: 23, t. 25 (1839)
  • Mueller Argoviensis: 213 (1857)
  • Harvey: 64 (1860)
  • Mueller Argoviensis: 584 (1868)
  • Oliver: 103 (1868)
  • Hellwig: 241 (1891)
  • Burtt Davy: 131 (1926)
  • Bolle: 684 (1936)
  • Roessler: 1 (1966)
  • Abdallah: 69 (1967)
  • Leistner: 179 (1970)
  • Thulin: 78 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 3, mainly Canary Islands, but also SW North America, N and NE Africa, SW Asia to W India
• Southern Africa: Species 2, endemic, Namibia, Botswana, North-West, Gauteng, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape