Description:

• Prostrate, ascending or erect, slender annual herbs, often much branched from all parts of main stem, without stinging hairs; plants monoecious or dioecious by abortion
• Leaves alternate, but lower 1 or 2 pairs often opposite, serrate, crenate or entire, petiolate, with dot-like cystoliths; stipules lateral, free
• Inflorescences axillary, sessile, with free, often ciliate or bristle-bearing bracts, usually shorter than densely clustered flowers
• Male flowers few together, sessile or subsessile; perianth boat-shaped, sometimes almost bract-like, split along one side, with erect tip and slightly connate cylindrical base; stamen 1; rudimentary ovary 0
• Female flowers few, sessile, with perianth 0; ovary erect, with a subcapitate or shortly linear style; stigma filiform or linear
• Achene slightly winged along one side, other side rounded; frequently 2 ovaries or achenes joining along rounded side to form a double fruit twice the size of two single fruits
• Seeds both developing, with thin coat

Nomenclature:

• Didymodoxa E.Mey. ex Wedd.
  • Weddell: 547 (1856)
  • Weddell: 23561 (1869)
  • Friis: 209 (1985)
  • Friis et al.: 126 (1987)
  • Friis & Wilmot-Dear: 45 (1988)
  • Friis: 60 (1989)
  • Friis: 114 (1991)
  • Friis: 628 (1993)
• Australina in sense of other authors, not of Gaudich.
  • Rendle: 305 (1917)
  • Brown: 552 (1925)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 2, mountains of eastern tropical Africa, as far north as N Ethiopia
• Southern Africa: Species 2, Namibia, Northern Province, Gauteng, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape