Sauvagesia

Perennial or annual herbs, completely glabrous, with erect shoots and frequently +/- elongate-ascending branches from base; stems slender, wiry, angular. Leaves elliptic or oblong-elliptic to oblanceolate, narrowing towards base but usually not petiolate, margin serrulate and incrassate; stipules with laciniate margins, longitudinally striate, free, persistent. Inflorescence paniculate to racemose and terminal or reduced to solitary or rarely paired flowers in axils of foliage leaves; pedicels articulated at or above base. Sepals 5, quincuncial in bud, green with pale margin, persistent, not enlarging or changing colour in fruit. Petals 5, spreading, not unguiculate, deciduous, white to pink. Androecium of (2)3 whorls; outer staminodes many in a continuous ring, white in upper parts or wholly crimson to purplish, inner petaloid staminodes 5, free, antepetalous, white with crimson to purplish base, truncate to retuse or eroded at apex; stamens 5, antesepalous, free; filaments short; anthers oblong-linear, dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary with 3 parietal placentas (or axile at base), each placenta bearing many ovules in 2 rows; style simple, slender, stigma not enlarged. Fruit a capsule with 3 septicidal valves. Seeds many, small, with punctate testa.