Description:

• Marsh or aquatic, perennial herbs, tufted, creeping or floating; stemless or with stolons, rooting at nodes, glabrous
• Leaves usually radical, sometimes fasciculate at nodes, rarely alternate, simple, usually petiolate, erect or floating, lamina linear, subulate, spathulate, oblong-ovate or suborbicular
• Flowers usually solitary, axillary; pedicels ebracteolate, often deflexed in fruit
• Calyx tubular, (4)5-lobed; tube funnel-shaped or campanulate; lobes subequal, usually shorter than tube, rarely longer
• Corolla tubular, 5-lobed, subregular; tube campanulate or turbinate; limb erect or rotate; lobes subequal, posterior outside in bud, rounded, ovate or oblong, pilose on inner face
• Stamens 4, mostly somewhat didynamous, in mouth of corolla tube or shortly exserted; filaments filiform, arising ± in middle of corolla tube, filaments of lower stamens often crossing those immediately above them at right angles; anthers with 2 equal, confluent thecae
• Ovary bilocular, at least near base, globose or elliptical; ovules many; style varying in length, terete, sometimes incurved, included or exserted; stigma capitate
• Fruit an ovoid to ± spherical capsule, almost indehiscent or at length loculicidal; valves entire
• Seeds many, subglobose, 4-sided, or oblong; testa thin, brown, ribbed or reticulate
• x = 10 (9 - 1 report) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Limosella L.
  • Linnaeus: 631 (1753)
  • Hiern: 356 (1904)
  • Glück: 488 (1934)
  • Merxmüller & Roessler: 26 (1967)
  • Hilliard & Burtt: 212 (1986)
  • Philcox: 73 (1990)
  • Mielcarek: 64 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 11, cosmopolitan, mainly in temperate and cooler regions but also in tropical mountains
• Southern Africa: Species ± 8, widespread but not in Swaziland