Flora Zambesiaca

Taxon Detail

FZ volume:4 part:0 (1978) Aizoaceae by M. L. Gonçalves

Aizoaceae Key

89a–d sensu lato

Range:

A large family comprising numerous genera.

Description:

Annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs, mostly succulent or subsucculent, glabrous or pubescent. Leaves simple, opposite, alternate or sometimes crowded, exstipulate, sometimes with small stipuliform lobes at base. Inflorescences solitary or in groups, axillary. Flower hermaphrodite, regular. Perianth segments 5, united below into a tube or almost free, ± herbaceous, imbricate or valvate, persistent. Stamens 5–?, hypogynous, sometimes in pairs or in fascicles, when definite alternate with the perianth segments. Ovary superior, of 1–5 united carpels; loculi as many as carpels; ovules 1–? per loculus; placentation parietal, axile or apical. Fruit capsular, loculicidal or circumscissile. Seeds usually subreniform, not strophiolate; embryo usually curved.

Notes:

For a discussion on its delimitation see Hoffmann, U. in Engl., Bot. Jahrb. 93: 247–324 (1973) and Ihlenfeldt, H. D. and Straka, H. in Herre, H., The Genera of the Mesembryanthemaceae, ed. 2, Rotterdam 1973.