Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs with annual shoots, prostrate or ascending to erect, with several semisucculent stems often tinged with red, with numerous prominent, linear, whitish raphides especially on leaves, minutely asperous on nodes and inflorescence; containing betalains
• Leaves opposite, linear to oblanceolate or elliptic, base sometimes attenuate into ill-defined petiole, margin entire; stipules 0
• Inflorescence axillary or terminal, laxly dichasial-cymose to densely umbellate; peduncle present or absent; bracts minute or obsolete
• Flowers bisexual or rarely unisexual, regular
• Sepals 5, free
• Petals (staminodes) 0
• Stamens 5-15(-20), arising just below gynoecium; filaments free, widening below; anthers 2-thecous, opening by longitudinal slits
• Gynoecium superior, apocarpous, of (3-)5(6) or 10-15 free carpels, each with solitary ovule and style on inner margin
• Fruit a cluster of 3-15 ± heterocarpic mericarps: either muricate or almost smooth with thin, ventral sutures
• Seeds thickly lens-shaped, black, microscopically pitted; embryo ± annular, peripheral; cotyledons oblong, fleshy; endosperm starchy
• x = 8 or 9 (1 report, high polyploidy)

Classification Notes:

• This family includes the single, isolated genus Gisekia, which has often been placed in either Aizoaceae (Adamson 1961; Jeffrey 1961), Phytolaccaceae (Walter 1909; Rohwer 1993; A.P.G. 1998) or Molluginaceae (Gonçalves 1978). It displays an anomalous set of characters, which complicates positive inclusion in any of these families (Gilbert 1993a)

Nomenclature:

• Gisekiaceae
  • Nakai: 91 (1942)
  • Gilbert: 343 (1993a)
  • Gilbert: 118 (1993b)
  • Takhtajan: 111 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genus 1, species 7, tropical and subtropical Africa, Arabia and Asia (S Vietnam), introduced elsewhere as a weed
• Southern Africa: Genus 1, species 2

References:

• A.P.G. 1998. An ordinal classification for the families of flowering plants. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 85
• ADAMSON, R.S. 1961. The South African species of Aizoaceae X. Gisekia. Journal of South African Botany 27
• GILBERT, M.G. 1993a. A review of Gisekia (Gisekiaceae). Kew Bulletin 48
• GILBERT, M.G. 1993b. Gisekiaceae. Flora of Somalia 1
• GONÇALVES, M.L. 1978. Molluginaceae. Flora zambesiaca 4
• JEFFREY, C. 1961. Aizoaceae. Flora of tropical East Africa. Aizoaceae
• NAKAI, T. 1942. Notulae ad plantas Asiae orientalis XVIII. Journal of Japanese Botany 18
• ROHWER, J.G. 1993. Phytolaccaceae. Genus of uncertain affinity. In K. Kubitzki, J.G. Rohwer & V. Bittrich, The families and genera of vascular plants - dicotyledons 2. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
• TAKHTAJAN, A. 1997. Diversity and classification of flowering plants. Columbia University Press, New York
• WALTER, H. P.H. 1909. Phytolaccaceae. Das Pflanzenreich 4. 83 (Heft 39)

Resources:

• Gisekiaceae genus: Gisekia