Source:
SSA
Description:
Annual or perennial herbs, sometimes rather woody at base, occasionally scandent. Leaves alternate, simple, entire or lobed. Inflorescences dense, terminal and axillary spikes, or in fascicles along floriferous branchlets, or more generally lax or compact terminal and axillary thyrses, bracteate. Flowers bisexual, small, white, silvery or rosy, sessile or shortly pedicellate; bracteoles 2. Tepals 5, free, all +/- equal, glabrous or rarely somewhat pilose. Stamens 5; filaments expanded and fused into a cup below, free portions deltoid below and narrow above or +/- swollen below; pseudostaminodes 0, rarely with minute, blunt intermediate teeth; anthers 2-thecous. Ovary ovoid to subglobose; ovules few to many, rarely solitary; style distinct and elongate to almost obsolete; stigmas 2 or 3, circular to filiform. Capsule membranous, circumscissile, sometimes thickened at apex. Seeds black, usually strongly compressed and shining, subcircular, reticulate, grooved, punctate or tuberculate, not arillate; endosperm present. x= 9 (7, 11) (high polyploidy) .
Distribution:
Species +/- 45, warmer regions of both Old and New World; 2 in sthn Afr., mainly in Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape.
Classification:
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