Description:

• Erect or decumbent herbs or shrublets, glabrous or hairy
• Leaves simple, trifid, lobed to pinnatipartite
• Inflorescences many-flowered spike-like racemes, bracteate
• Flowers bisexual, on long pedicels
• Sepals (4)5 or 6(-9), unequal, usually persistent
• Petals usually 5 or 6, free, white or yellow, unequal, usually with a dilated, basal portion and a variously dissected, rarely entire, upper portion
• Disc usually present, campanulate or funnel-shaped, often dilated on adaxial side
• Stamens 12-25(-40), arising on disc
• Ovary of 2-5 carpels, 1-locular, usually ± open at top, 2-5 apical, conical points bearing stigmatic surfaces; ovules many, pendulous and arranged in rows
• Fruit a membranous, leathery, usually indehiscent capsule gaping at apex
• Seeds many, ± reniform, smooth, rough or papillose
• x = 6, 10 (7, 8, 13) (polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• *Reseda L.
  • Linnaeus: 448 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 207 (1754)
  • Gray: 665 (1821)
  • Mueller Argoviensis: 96 (1857)
  • Hooker: 111 (1862)
  • Mueller Argoviensis: 555 (1868)
  • Oliver: 103 (1868)
  • Hellwig: 240 (1891)
  • Bolle: 687 (1936)
  • Adamson: 424 (1950)
  • Elffers & Taylor: 1 (1958)
  • Taylor: 245 (1960)
  • Yeo: 346 (1964)
  • Zohary: 331 (1966)
  • Leistner: 178 (1970)
  • Meikle: 176 (1977)
  • Abdallah & De Wit: 99 (1978)
  • Thulin: 78 (1993)
• Stefaninia Chiov.
  • Chiovenda: 77 (1929)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 55; in the Mediterranean region, the Macaronesian Islands, NE and E Africa, Arabian Peninsula and eastwards to NW India, also introduced in various temperate regions
• Southern Africa: Species 1: *Reseda lutea L. subsp. lutea var. nutans Boiss., introduced, widely naturalised, North-West, Gauteng, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Western and Eastern Cape