Description:

• Carnivorous, perennial or annual herbs, aquatic or terrestrial in wet places, with specialised organs (traps) for catching small organisms; distinction between roots, stems, leaves and traps are not always clear; rootless but often with rhizoids; stems short or 0 but stolons often present
• Leaves rosulate or scattered on stolons, entire or much divided, sometimes heteromorphic; stipules 0
• Flowers bisexual, irregular, usually in terminal or axillary, bracteate racemes, rarely solitary; lowest bracts usually barren; bracteoles 2, normally at base of pedicels, or 0
• Calyx 5-partite or ± 2-cleft, almost regular or ± bilabiate, persistent and often accrescent
• Corolla gamopetalous, bilabiate, 5-lobed; tube very short or 0; upper lip erect, interior in bud; lower lip spurred or rarely saccate at base, usually with a raised, ± gibbous palate; limb spreading or deflexed
• Stamens 2, anterior, arising from base of corolla; filaments usually short and curved; anthers dorsifixed, bithecate, thecae diverging, usually ± confluent, dehiscing longitudinally by a common slit; staminodes 0
• Nectary/disc 0
• Ovary superior, bicarpellate but unilocular; placenta free-basal, usually ovoid or globose; ovules usually many, sessile and closely packed, rarely single, anatropous, unitegmic; style simple and very short or 0; stigma ± distinctly 2-lipped, with upper lip usually smaller or ± 0
• Fruit a capsule, dehiscing variously, often in circumscissile manner, very rarely 1-seeded and indehiscent
• Seeds very small; testa reticulate; embryo undifferentiated; endosperm 0

Nomenclature:

• Lentibulariaceae
  • Stapf: 423 (1904)
  • Schreiber: 1 (1968)
  • Taylor: 9 (1988)
  • Taylor: 1 (1989)
  • Mabberley: 401 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 3, species ± 245; cosmopolitan
• Southern Africa: Genera 2, species ± 19

References:

• MABBERLEY, D.J. 1997. The plant-book, edn 2. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• SCHREIBER, A. 1968. Lentibulariaceae. Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika 133
• STAPF, O. 1904. Lentibularieæ. Flora capensis 4, 2
• TAYLOR, P. 1988. Lentibulariaceae. Flora zambesiaca 8, 3
• TAYLOR, P. 1989. The genus Utricularia - a taxonomic monograph. Kew Bulletin Additional series 14

Resources:

• Key to Lentibulariaceae genera

• Lentibulariaceae genera: