Description:

• Herbs, shrubs, or trees, rarely scandent or prostrate; stem often 4-angled
• Leaves opposite, rarely whorled, simple, often petiolate, mostly with 3-9 ± parallel main veins from base or near to it, rarely penninerved, entire, crenate or toothed; stipules 0
• Flowers regular, bisexual, in spikes, panicles, corymbs, or sometimes fascicled or solitary
• Calyx 4- or 5-lobed or truncate; tube often adnate to ovary
• Petals free, as many as calyx lobes, arising in mouth of calyx tube, imbricate
• Stamens as many as, or more often, twice as many as petals and arising with them, equal or unequal; filaments usually with a conspicuous joint; anthers 1- or 2-thecous, basifixed or dorsifixed, often linear, often horned or spurred, with connective often thickened at apex, opening by pores or lateral slits
• Ovary inferior or partly inferior, 1- or 2-many-locular, with free-central placenta, with few to many ovules in each locule; stigma simple or lobed
• Fruit a loculicidal capsule or berry, usually enclosed in persistent calyx
• Seeds many, usually minute

Nomenclature:

• Melastomataceae
  • Fernandes & Fernandes: 220 (1978)
  • Jacques-Félix: 235 (1995)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 240, species 3 000, cosmopolitan under tropical and subtropical conditions
• Southern Africa: Genera 5, species 11

References:

• FERNANDES, R. & FERNANDES, A. 1978. Melastomataceae. Flora zambesiaca 4
• JACQUES-FÉLIX, H. 1995. Histoire des Melastomataceae d'Afrique. Bulletin du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. Paris 16,4, section B Adansonia 2-4

Resources:

• Key to Melastomataceae genera

• Melastomataceae genera: