Description:

• Perennial, rarely annual, herbs, shrublets, shrubs or trees
• Leaves alternate, rarely opposite, simple, margin entire, dentate or incised; stipules 2, foliaceous, small or minute, persistent or caducous
• Flowers bisexual, irregular, sometimes regular, solitary, axillary, or in compound, often reduced, inflorescences
• Sepals 5, usually free, persistent, quincuncial
• Petals 5, free, deciduous or persistent, imbricate or contorted, hypogynous; in irregular flowers the anterior petal sometimes spurred or pouched
• Stamens 5(-15), usually hypogynous; anthers connivent in a ring around the ovary, 2-thecous, introrse, opening by longitudinal slits, thecae and connective often produced into dorsal and apical appendages; filaments 0 or short, simple or variously appendaged, 2 anterior filaments often forming caudate glandular spurs
• Ovary superior, sessile, 1-locular with 3(-5) parietal placentas bearing 1-many anatropous, bitegmic ovules; style simple, straight, oblique or sigmoid, often somewhat swollen in upper half; stigma usually entire, apical
• Fruit a loculicidal capsule often with contractile valves
• Seeds with a short funicle, sometimes winged, tomentose or smooth, sometimes hygroscopic, becoming glutinous when wetted, occasionally with a gibbous aril, with abundant endosperm

Nomenclature:

• Violaceae
  • Sonder: 72 (1860) as Violarieae
  • Obermeyer: 42 (1976)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 23; species 830, mostly pantropical with the large cosmopolitan genus Viola predominantly temperate
• Southern Africa: Genera 3, species ± 10

References:

• OBERMEYER, A.A. 1976. Violaceae. Flora of southern Africa 22
• SONDER, W. 1860. Violarieae, DC. Flora capensis 1

Resources:

• Key to Violaceae genera

• Violaceae genera: