Description:

• Perennial herbs; stems erect, semidecumbent or decumbent, simple or branched from base, with a pseudodichotomous branching pattern, glandular-pubescent or glabrous; nodes thickened; roots often tuberous
• Leaves opposite, lower petiolate, upper sessile
• Inflorescences axillary or terminal, cymose, 1-many-flowered compound dichasia
• Flowers bisexual, large, sometimes fragrant, ephemeral; bracts forming a calyx-like involucre with 5 lobes; lobes acuminate
• Perianth: tube campanulate, funnelform or salverform, constricted above ovary, limb spreading, plicate, sometimes enlarged and membranous in fruit, brightly coloured, white, red, yellow, or variegated, deciduous; lobes (4)5(-8)
• Stamens 2-6, unequal in length, exserted; filaments filiform, incurved, connate into a fleshy cup at base; anther thecae subglobose
• Ovary sessile or subsessile, ellipsoid or ovoid; ovule erect; style filiform, long-exserted; stigma globose, with densely packed stalked papillae or fimbriate
• Fruit enclosed in hardened base of perianth (anthocarp) and surrounded by persistent staminal cap; anthocarp ellipsoid, globose or claviform, often angled or ± 5-10-ribbed, smooth or tuberculate, not viscid
• Seed filling pericarp to which testa adheres; perisperm mealy; embryo hooked
• x = 11 (10) (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Mirabilis L.
  • Linnaeus: 177 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 82 (1754)
  • Choisy: 427 (1849)
  • Hooker: 3 (1880)
  • Heimerl: 24 (1889)
  • Baker & Wright: 1 (1909)
  • Cooke: 393 (1910)
  • Heimerl: 108 (1934)
  • Webb: 111 (1964)
  • Stemmerik: 451 (1964)
  • Meikle & Hewson: 6 (1984)
  • Stannard: 13 (1988)
  • Bittrich & Kühn: 482 (1993)
  • Le Duc: 613 (1995)
  • Whitehouse: 15 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 60, almost exclusively in warmer parts of America, from California to Argentina; 1 in western Himalayas and SW China; 1 in Europe (an escape from cultivation)
• Southern Africa: Species 2, introduced: *Mirabilis jalapa L., 'The Marvel of Peru', which is partly naturalised over a fairly wide area and *M. viscosa Cav. only in Namibia