Description:

• Annual or short-lived perennial herbs or subshrubs, tufted, often somewhat woody towards base; stems mostly thickened at nodes
• Leaves opposite, grass-like, connate basally and forming a sheath, frequently 5-nerved; stipules 0
• Inflorescences terminal panicles of cymes, in heads or occasionally flowers solitary, often subtended by bracts
• Flowers bisexual, rarely unisexual; anthophore often present
• Calyx gamosepalous, surrounded at base by 2-many bracts, tubular, firm, finely striate, 5-toothed, with many parallel veins, without membranous commissures
• Petals 5, white, pink or red, rarely yellow, limb entire, toothed or fimbriate, without coronal scales; claw long, with two longitudinal ridges
• Stamens 10; filaments long, slender
• Ovary 1-locular, on a short gynophore, with chartaceous cap; ovules many on free central placenta; styles 2, linear, longer than ovary
• Fruit a capsule, ovoid to cylindric, opening by 4 valves
• Seeds many, orbicular to ovoid in outline, ± compressed, with facial hilum, black; testa with raised polygonal sculpturing; embryo straight
• x = 15 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Dianthus L.
  • Linnaeus: 409 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 191 (1754)
  • Jussieu: 302 (1789)
  • Candolle: 355 (1824)
  • Sonder: 122 (1860)
  • Pax: 76 (1889)
  • Williams: 346 (1893)
  • Burtt Davy: 148 (1926)
  • Pax & Hoffmann: 356 (1934)
  • Hooper: 1 (1959)
  • Tutin: 188 (1964)
  • Podlech: 1 (1967)
  • Wild, Hooper & Diniz: 16 (1973)
  • Meikle: 214 (1977)
  • Bittrich: 232 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 300, Europe, Asia, especially Mediterranean, Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 15, widely distributed. Some species are cultivated as ornamentals (e.g. *Dianthus caryophyllus L. and * D. chinensis L.)