Vahliaceae Dandy

Annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs, glabrous or pubescent with multicellular often gland-tipped hairs. Leaves opposite, sessile to subsessile, simple, ovate to linear, midrib apparent but lateral nerves obscure, entire, exstipulate. Inflorescences axillary, erect, sessile to pedunculate, bearing paired sessile to pedicellate flowers. Flowers hermaphrodite, regular. Calyx-tube adnate to the ovary, campanulate to subglobose, often distinctly 5-veined; lobes 5, valvate, persistent. Petals 5, valvate, alternate with calyx-lobes, shorter than or just exceeding the calyx-lobes, lanceolate to round, entire to crenate, or irregularly dentate. Stamens 5, alternate with the petals, inserted on the margin of an epigynous disc; filaments free, subulate, with or without a widened membranous area or scale-like appendage at the base; anthers 2-thecous, dehiscing longitudinally, introrse, dorsifixed. Ovary inferior, 1-locular; styles 2 (or ?3), spreading, shorter than or exceeding the calyx-lobes, bases separate to the disc or shortly above it; stigmas capitellate; ovules numerous, attached to 2 thick pendulous flattened rounded placentas hanging from the apex of the locule. Fruit a capsule, subglobose or obovoid, dehiscing by 2(–?3) valves between the style-bases, all floral parts (except anthers) persistent. Seeds numerous, oblong, minute