Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs or undershrubs, sometimes prostrate, often associated with water
• Leaves opposite or alternate, usually entire; stipules present, often much reduced
• Flowers regular, borne in axils of reduced upper leaves, their opening not highly synchronised
• Sepals 3-7, persistent after petals have fallen; floral tube 0
• Petals as many as sepals or 0, yellow, usually entire
• Stamens as many as or twice as many as sepals; anthers ovoid or oblong; pollen shed in tetrads or singly
• Ovary with many pluriseriate or uniseriate ovules in each locule; stigma entire
• Capsule terete or 4- or 5-ribbed, -angled, or -winged, irregularly loculicidal
• Seeds ellipsoid, lacking hairs, free or embedded in endocarp at maturity, light brown
• x = 8 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Ludwigia L.
  • Linnaeus: 118 (1753)
  • Harvey: 504 (1862)
  • Raven: 327 (1963)
  • Raven: 333 (1978)
  • Goldblatt & Raven: 149 (1997)
• Jussiaea L.
  • Linnaeus: 388 (1753)
  • Harvey: 504 (1862)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 85, worldwide, mainly South America, relatively few in Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 7, in Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Western and Eastern Cape