Description:

• Suffruticose perennials or shrubs, decumbent or ascending
• Leaves simple to 3-, 5- or 7-lobed or -parted or trifoliolate, petiolate, rarely subsessile
• Flowers solitary or in 2- to several-flowered open or globose cymes, sometimes appearing racemose or corymbose by reduction of upper leaves
• Epicalyx of 3(-5) bracts, free or adnate to calyx tube
• Calyx (3-)5-lobed, sometimes slightly accrescent; tube broadly campanulate
• Petals 4 or 5(-8), longer than calyx, apex often emarginate to bilobed, base entire to bi-auriculate, white, pink to rose-magenta
• Staminal tube included or exserted, split at apex into many filaments; anthers ± 15-170, in clusters, yellowish to magenta or crimson, usually drying black
• Gynoecium of 5-26, ± free, 1-6-ovuled carpels; style branches as many as carpels, filiform; stigmas capitate to introrsely subdecurrent
• Fruit a schizocarp, discoid (in 1-ovulate species) to ovoid or ellipsoid (in many-ovulate species); mericarps laterally compressed, chartaceous to woody, apically rounded to acute, 1-3-seeded, partially dehiscent to dehiscent
• Seeds ovoid-reniform, glabrous to puberulent

Nomenclature:

• Anisodontea C.Presl
  • Presl: 448 (1845)
  • Bates: 215 (1969)
• Sphaeroma Harv.
  • Harvey: 166 (1860) not of DC. nor of Schltr.
• Malvastrum Harv.
  • Harvey: 159 (1860) not of A.Gray
  • Phillips: 498 (1951) in part
• Sphaeralcea Harv.
  • harvey: 165 (1860), not of A.St.-Hil.
  • Phillips: 497 (1951) in part

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 21, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape; principally in karoo and fynbos