Description:

• Erect annual herbs; monoecious, rarely dioecious
• Leaves alternate, shortly petiolate; stipulate
• Flowers in lax, axillary and solitary, pedunculate racemes; upper flowers male, lower 1 or more female
• Male flowers: calyx closed in bud, ovoid or subglobose, splitting into 5 valvate lobes; petals 5, imbricate, subequal or with 2 lowest reduced or even obsolete; disc obsolete; stamens usually 10; filaments connate below into a column, 2-seriate above, free portion spreading; anthers short, ovoid, with 2 thecae pendulous from glandular connective and dehiscing longitudinally; ovary rudimentary, at apex of staminal column
• Female flowers: sepals 5(or 6), generally unequal, imbricate, outer smaller than inner; petals 5, subequal; disc absent; ovary sessile, 3-locular, with ovules solitary in each locule; styles slightly connate at base, ovate, deeply laciniate
• Fruit a capsule with bivalved cocci, with obtuse or subulate processes mixed with or passing into gland-tipped setae; endocarp thinly crustaceous; columella not usually persistent
• Seeds subglobose or oblong-globose, with minutely punctate-reticulate testa, without caruncle but with thin adhering aril which may form a false raphe; albumen fleshy; cotyledons broad, flat
• x = 11 (1 report, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Caperonia A.St.-Hil.
  • Saint-Hilaire: 244 (1824)
  • Prain: 457 (1920)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 163 (1987)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 448 (1989)
  • Webster: 71 (1994)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 138 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 40, tropical to subtropical, mostly America, 6 in Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 2, Namibia, Northern Province, Mpumalanga lowveld to N KwaZulu-Natal