Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs, often somewhat woody at base; stems usually striate, glabrous to viscid, glandular-hispid and aromatic
• Leaves alternate, simple or digitately 3-13-foliolate, petiolate; leaflets usually narrow and usually entire
• Inflorescence a terminal raceme
• Flowers usually irregular
• Sepals 4, usually free or almost so, persistent or deciduous, usually narrow and often glandular-pubescent
• Petals 4, sessile or clawed, equal or unequal, usually longer than sepals
• Stamens 4-many, all fertile or some sterile, borne on a small torus or receptacle or on a long or short androgynophore; filaments equal or unequal, usually declinate; anthers 2-thecous, usually oblong or narrowly oblong, sometimes with a small, apical projection
• Ovary sessile or with a short gynophore, with many ovules on 2 parietal placentas; style short or 0; stigma capitate or truncate
• Fruit an oblong or linear capsule, often borne on an elongated gynophore, opening by 2 valves separating from seed-bearing placentas, terminating in persistent style; valves glabrous to glandular-pubescent, smooth or strongly longitudinally nerved
• Seeds reniform to almost circular in outline, surface almost smooth or reticulate-foveolate to transversely rugose, glabrous or pubescent
• x = 10 (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Cleome L.
  • Linnaeus: 671 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 302 (1754)
  • Sonder: 55 (1860)
  • Gilg & Gilg-Benedict: 145 (1915)
  • Roessler: 6 (1966)
  • Codd & Kers: 119 (1970)
  • Wild & Gonçalves: 12 (1973)
  • Thulin & Kers: 53 (1993)
• Polanisia Raf.
  • Rafinesque: 267 (1818)
  • Sonder: 56 (1860)
• Gynandropsis DC.
  • Candolle: 237 (1824)
  • Sonder: 55 (1860)
  • Oliver: 81 (1868)
  • Pax & Gilg: 184 (1895)
  • Wild: 205 (1960)
  • Roessler: 12 (1966)
• Tetratelia Sond.
  • Sonder: 58 (1860)
  • Pax & Hoffmann: 219 (1936)
• Dianthera Klotzsch ex Sond.
  • Sonder: 57 (1860)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 150, cosmopolitan in tropical and warmer regions of the world
• Southern Africa: Species 21, widespread