Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs, erect, dichotomously branched, glabrous or pubescent with multicellular, often gland-tipped hairs
• Leaves opposite, sessile to subsessile, simple, ovate to linear, entire, midrib apparent but lateral nerves obscure; stipules 0
• Inflorescences axillary, erect, sessile to pedunculate, bearing paired, sessile to pedicellate flowers
• Flowers bisexual, regular
• Calyx: tube campanulate to subglobose, often distinctly 5-veined, adnate to ovary; lobes 5, valvate, persistent
• Petals 5, free, valvate, alternating with calyx lobes, shorter than or just exceeding calyx lobes, lanceolate to round, entire to crenate or irregularly dentate, white or yellow
• Stamens 5, alternating with petals, arising from margin of epigynous disc; filaments free, subulate, with or without a widened membranous area or scale-like appendage at base; anthers 2-thecous, dehiscing longitudinally, introrse, dorsifixed
• Ovary inferior, 1-locular; ovules many, tenuinucellate, attached to 2 thick pendulous, flattened, rounded placentas hanging from apex of locule; styles 2 or 3, spreading, shorter than or exceeding calyx lobes, usually fused near base; stigmas capitulate
• Fruit a capsule, subglobose or obovoid, dehiscing by 2 or 3 valves between style bases, all floral parts (except anthers) persistent
• Seeds many, minute, oblong

Classification Notes:

• The family Vahliaceae is sometimes included in the Saxifragaceae

Nomenclature:

• Vahliaceae
  • Dandy: 461 (1959)
  • Bridson: 163 (1975a)
  • Bridson: 1(1975b)
  • Bridson:48 (1978)
  • Bridson: 28 (1989)
  • Thulin: 340 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genus 1, species 5, all in Africa, 2 extending to Madagascar, Iraq, Iran, India and Vietnam
• Southern Africa: Genus 1, species 2

References:

• BRIDSON, D.M. 1975a. A revision of the family Vahliaceae. Kew Bulletin 30
• BRIDSON, D.M. 1975b. Flora of tropical East Africa. Vahliaceae
• BRIDSON, D.M. 1978. Vahliaceae. Flora zambesiaca 4
• BRIDSON, D.M. 1989. Vahliaceae. Flora of Ethiopia 3
• DANDY, J.E. 1959. Vahliaceae. In J. Hutchinson, The families of flowering plants, edn 2,1. Clarendon Press, Oxford
• THULIN, M. 1993. Vahliaceae. Flora of Somalia 1

Resources:

• Vahliaceae genus: Vahlia