Description:

• Erect shrublets or with annual, repent, decumbent or ascending branches from a woody crown, or annuals, glabrous, pilose or glandular-pubescent, often aromatic
• Roots of hygrophilous plants usually with a spongy outer covering
• Leaves decussate or rarely verticillate; lamina linear to ovate or obovate, margin entire or serrate, the teeth usually gland-tipped, pointing upwards
• Flowers small
• Sepals 5, midrib prominent, margin membranous
• Petals 5, delicate, white, pink or mauve
• Stamens 10 (5 in B. ammannioides)
• Ovary 5-locular, bearing 5 short or long, patent styles with apical, usually capitate, stigmas (in older flowers these curve outwards and touch stamens; probably self-pollinated); ovules many
• Capsule with 5 valves breaking away from hard, thin dissepiments; placentas bulging or recurved to horn-shaped, covered with short, hardened funicles; axis prolonged above into a subulate tip
• Seeds very small, subcylindric to somewhat reniform, usually obtuse above and below, tesselated or smooth, yellow to brown or black
• x = 9 or 12 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Bergia L.
  • Linnaeus: 1309 (1771)
  • Harvey: 115 (1860)
  • Friedrich-Holzhammer: 1 (1968)
  • Obermeyer: 24 (1976)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 25, widespread in tropical and subtropical countries
• Southern Africa: Species 10, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape