Description:

• Annual or, mostly perennial, small, compact herbs; stems often prostrate, much branched from base
• Leaves mostly opposite and unequal, upper ones sometimes alternate (due to reduction of one of the leaves), small, entire, sessile or subsessile, obovate to narrowly elliptic; stipules minute, scarious, entire, sometimes with ciliate margin, 2 per pair of leaves
• Inflorescences small cymose clusters, usually congested on short lateral branches; bracts and bracteoles small, stipule-like
• Flowers bisexual or unisexual, ± perigynous, subsessile, small
• Sepals (4)5(6), mostly plano-concave and connivent to erect
• Petals (0)4 or 5, minute, subulate-filiform, alternating with sepals
• Stamens (2)4 or 5, equal or unequal, with or without staminodes, alternating with petals; filaments filiform; anthers oblong or quadrangular and orange-yellow
• Ovary subglobose or ovoid; ovule solitary, basal, amphitropous; style usually short and occasionally entirely suppressed, sometimes quite distinct and elongate; stigma notched or bifid, subsessile or on a short style
• Fruit an ovoid to narrowly ellipsoid, membranous nutlet enclosed by persistent calyx, rupturing irregularly at base
• Seeds globular to lenticular, smooth and shining, dark brown; embryo annular, surrounding endosperm
• x = 9 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Herniaria L.
  • Linnaeus: 218 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 103 (1754)
  • Jussieu: 89 (1789)
  • Candolle: 367 (1828)
  • Sonder: 132 (1860)
  • Hooker: 16 (1880)
  • Pax: 91 (1889)
  • Williams: 556 (1896)
  • Baker & Wright: 12 (1909)
  • Hermann: 206 (1937)
  • Brummitt & Heywood: 151 (1964)
  • Podlech: 2 (1966)
  • Chaudhri: 297 (1968)
  • Friedrich: 755 (1979)
  • Bittrich: 223 (1993)
  • Gilbert: 98 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 47, a few widely distributed in Eurasia and North Africa, the rest narrow endemics in Canary Islands, (1 isolated sp. in Somalia)
• Southern Africa: Species 5, mainly in Northern, Western and Eastern Cape, otherwise scattered, except Northern Province, Swaziland and only on borders of KwaZulu-Natal