Description:

• Perennial or annual herbs or undershrubs, all parts variably pubescent
• Leaves alternate, rarely opposite, often crowded, petiolate or sessile, flat to cylindrical; stipules 0
• Inflorescence mostly frondose
• Flowers bisexual, often seemingly solitary or in axillary groups
• Perianth 4- or 5-lobed; tube ± campanulate, sometimes short, often strigose; lobes valvate or imbricate, white inside, yellow or pink outside
• Stamens few to many, arising from calyx throat, in groups alternating with calyx lobes; filaments filiform
• Ovary superior, 4- or 5-locular, sometimes discoid, included in calyx tube, with 2-many pendulous ovules per locule
• Fruit a capsule with central impression, somewhat corky or woody, expanding keels long or short, lifting valves only slightly
• Seeds small, pear-shaped or reniform, on long funicle, with concentric ridges
• x = 8

Nomenclature:

• Aizoon L.
  • Linnaeus: 488 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 216 (1754)
  • Sonder: 469 (1862)
  • Adamson: 29 (1959)
  • Friedrich: 613 (1960)
  • Friedrich: 13 (1970)
  • Gonçalves: 509 (1978)
  • Hartmann: 44 (1993)
  • Gilbert: 112 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 25, Mediterranean
• Southern Africa: Species 11, Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape
  • Often introduced as weed into suitable climates