Description:

• Perennial herbs or undershrubs, glabrous or pubescent
• Leaves alternate, opposite or sometimes whorled, sessile; stipular glands present or 0
• Flowers short-pedicelled in an open or condensed terminal racemose or paniculate scorpioid cyme, homostylous or 2 species distylous, perfect
• Sepals 5, imbricate, outer occasionally entire or sparsely serrate or, more frequently, all with marginal glandular teeth
• Petals 5, separate, convolute, yellow, frequently reddish-tinged in bud, short-lived
• Stamens 5, united basally, with or without diminutive intervening staminodia
• Ovary 5-carpellate, becoming partially 10-locular as a result of intrusion of false partitions
• Styles 5, separate or united, sometimes nearly to summit; stigmas capitate
• Fruit an ovate capsule, dehiscing into 10 1-seeded segments
• Seeds shining, reddish brown
• x = 9, 10 (7, 8) (aneuploids, polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Linum L.
  • Linnaeus: 277 (1753)
  • Sonder: 309 (1860)
  • Robson: 96 (1963)
  • Rogers: 711 (1981)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 230, cosmopolitan in temperate and subtropical regions
• Southern Africa: Species 14, all belonging to the section Linopsis, which ranges broadly from the Mediterranean region to southern Africa and to both North and South America
  • 13 species endemic to the Western and Eastern Cape
  • Linum thunbergii Eckl. & Zeyh. in Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Western and Eastern Cape