Home
Annual or perennial herbs, shrubs or rarely small trees. Stern elongate and succulent or woody or a cylindrical rhizome or sometimes reduced to a tuberous rhizome, sometimes climbing. Leaves usually alternate or rarely subverticillate, entire, serrate, lobed or digitately compound, usually asymmetric, sometimes peltate, stipules 2, free, persistent or deciduous. Peduncles mostly axillary. Inflorescence usually cymose, sometimes 1-flowered or racemose. Cymes regular or strongly one-sided, usually dichotomous, unisexual or bisexual. Flowers monoecious. Tepals free or rarely connate, usually 4 staminate in two pairs and 5 pistillate. Stamens indefinite, inserted on the receptacle, filaments free or united. Styles usually 3, free or connate, usually bifid, ovary inferior, placentae axile, simple or divided. Fruit capsular, usually bearing 3 unequal wings.
Fibrous-rooted, bushy herbs to c. 30 cm high; stems succulent and much-branched. Lvs with large scarious stipules; petiole reddish, to c. 3 cm long; lamina to c. 8 × 6 cm (larger in cultivation), broadly ovate, usually partly folded lengthways, semi-succulent, glossy above, glabrous except for the sparsely ciliate, reddish, undulate margin; base almost symmetric to somewhat oblique. Fls in small axillary clusters toward stem apices. ♂ fls: sepals 2, 1.5-c. 2.5 cm diam., almost orbicular, white, pink or rose; petals 2, c. 1.0 × 0.5 cm, narrowly elliptic-obovate, coloured similiarly. ♀ fls smaller; sepals 3; petals 2. Ovary with 3, broad, pink to red wings. Stigmas spirally twisted.
female flowers: tepals 2–5(6–9), often persistent; ovary inferior, (2)3(4–6)-locular (always 3-celled in F.Z. area), usually angled or winged; styles 2–6, free or connate, usually bifid but occasionally multifid (not in F.Z. area), branches stigmatic and often twisted; placentation axile, placentae entire or bilamellate (2-lobed in transverse section); ovules ?.
male flowers: tepals 2–5, free or very rarely connate; stamens ?, filaments free or very rarely connate; anthers ovoid to oblong, rarely circular or linear, dehiscing by lateral slits or rarely with apical pores.
Plants sometimes rhizomatous [sometimes tuberous]. Stems erect or ascending [climbing], reddish [green or brown], simple or branched. Cymes [1–]few[–many]-flowered. Capsules [2–]3[–5+]-locular. x = 9.
Leaves ± asymmetric27, palmate-veined, lobed, toothed or entire, simple or very rarely pinnate (not in F.Z. area), sometimes peltate (not in F.Z. area); stipules free, persistent or deciduous.
♂ and ♀ fls often showy; sepals and petals free, combined number 10. Stamens usually forming a yellow globose mass. Ovary completely inferior. Fr. nearly always a loculicidal capsule.
Herbs and subshrubs, often acaulescent (rarely so in F.Z. area), often with tuberous caudices or creeping rhizomes, or climbing by adventitious roots.
Flowers monoecious, ± zygomorphic, in terminal and axillary cymes; tepals pink, orange, yellow or white.
Fruit a capsule or berry, usually with irregular dehiscence; seeds minute and very numerous.
