Description:

• Shrubs or small trees, evergreen, usually halophytic, rarely dioecious
• Leaves reduced to amplexicaul, vaginate scales, sessile, alternate, punctate with sunken, salt-secreting glands; stipules 0
• Inflorescence a simple, many-flowered, catkin-like raceme on old and/or on young wood; bracts ± resembling leaves, 1 per flower
• Flowers bisexual or rarely unisexual, regular, shortly pedicelled, very small and very many
• Sepals 5, free, spreading
• Petals 5, free, longer than sepals, white, pink or red
• Disc saucer- to cup-shaped, often fleshy, dark-coloured with margin variously lobed
• Stamens 4-10, fused basally with the disc; filaments free, thin; anthers 2-locular, versatile, with longitudinal slits, apiculate or obtuse; in female flowers changed to staminodes
• Ovary superior, 1-locular, flask-shaped, with 3(4 or 5) basal-parietal placentas bearing several to many erect, anatropous ovules; styles 3, short, incurved
• Fruit a usually 3-valved capsule
• Seeds several to many, narrowly ovoid with an apical tuft of hairs and a plumose awn; endosperm 0
• x = 12 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Tamaricaceae
  • Harvey: 119 (1860) as Tamaricineae
  • Hunt: 1 (1966)
  • Podlech: 1 (1968)
  • Obermeyer: 36 (1976)
  • Baum: 14 (1978)
  • Van Wyk & Van Wyk: 68 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 4, species ± 75, Old World, mostly in the northern hemisphere
• Southern Africa: Genus 1, species 1 indigenous, 1 or 2 naturalised

References:

• BAUM, B.R. 1978. The genus Tamarix. The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem
• HARVEY, W.H. 1860. Tamaricineae. Flora capensis l
• HUNT, D.R. 1966. Flora of tropical East Africa. Tamaricaceae
• OBERMEYER, A.A. 1976. Tamaricaceae. Flora of southern Africa 22
• PODLECH, D. 1968. Tamaricaceae. Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika 90
• VAN WYK, B. [A.E.] & VAN WYK, P. 1997. Field guide to trees of southern Africa. Struik, Cape Town

Resources:

• Tamaricaceae genus: Tamarix