Description:

• Prostrate, decumbent or erect, suffrutescent or annual, glanduliferous, hairy herbs; stems herbaceous to woody, terete or somewhat compressed
• Leaves alternate, subopposite or opposite, pairs mostly unequal; lamina simple (rarely compound), palmately or pinnately veined; petiolate; with paired stipules
• Inflorescence cymose, subumbellate, bracteate, 1-15-flowered
• Flowers regular
• Sepals 5, free or connate, imbricate, persistent, margin membranous, apex mucronate, with concealed spurs or pouches when connate
• Petals 5, free, imbricate or contorted, main veins palmately arranged
• Stamens 15, mostly all perfect, monadelphous, in 5 basely connate groups or rarely pentadelphous with 5 groups of 3 basely connate filaments, less often all equal; filaments subulate, ciliate; anthers glabrous, dorsifixed
• Ovary sessile or subsessile, deeply 5-lobed, 5-locular, with 2 ovules per locule; lower ovule abortive; stigmas 5, subterete and linear, inner side with papillose receptive surface
• Mericarps 1-seeded, awns spirally twisted, crested or crested and plumose
• Seeds brown, smooth or obscurely reticulate; embryo folded
• x = 9, 12, 13 (1 report each)

Nomenclature:

• Monsonia L.
  • Linnaeus: 507, 508 (1767)
  • Harvey: 254 (1860)
  • Knuth: 290 (1912)
  • Venter: 1 (1979)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 40, Africa, Madagascar and SW Asia
• Southern Africa: Species 20, widespread