Description: Herbs to subshrubs or shrubs, annual or perennial, branched from the base; pubescent to puberulent-glandular indument at branches or totally glabrous.
Leaves palmately compound with 3‒7(‒12, not in N.S.W.) leaflets; petiolate; stipules spinescent.
Inflorescences corymbiform racemes, bracteate, the lower with leaf-like bracts with 3‒5 leaflets, becoming 1-foliolate in the inflorescence axis. Flowers zygomorphic, 4-merous; petals clawed, white or white becoming pink or purplish at apex, or a pair of each color; nectary ring-shaped; stamens 6, connate with each other at base and adnate to gynophore to form androgynophore.
Fruit a capsule, sessile or pedicellate, cylindrical, ellipsoid, fusiform or oblanceoloid. Seeds horseshoe-shaped; cleft covered by a membrane attaching both tips; surface longitudinally striate and transversely ridged.
Distribution and occurrence: World: c. 37 species, Mexico to Argentina, one species endemic to East Africa. Australia: 2 species, naturalised Qld. N.S.W., formerly naturalised Vic.
Text by Kerry Gibbons, 15 May 2023.
Taxon concept: Neto et al. 2018, Acta Botanica Brasilica 32: 540-545.
| One species in NSW: Tarenaya hassleriana |
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