8668.000 Wahlenbergia Schrad. ex Roth

Annual or perennial herbs or small shrubs. Leaves alternate, rarely opposite. Calyx lobes (3-)5. Flowers actinomorphic. Corolla ± deeply (3-)5-lobed. Stamens (3-)5. Ovary subinferior to rarely subsuperior, 2-5-locular. Style shorter or longer than the corolla, the upper part with pollen-collecting hairs, glabrous or hairy below, eglandular or with small glands present at or near the base of the 2-5 style lobes. Capsule loculicidal, dehiscing by as many apical valves as there are loculi in the ovary. Seeds numerous.

Derivation of name: after Georg Göran Wahlenberg (1780–1851), Swedish naturalist, geographer, doctor and professor of botany at the University of Uppsala. (Clarke, Charters & Moll-Ed.: 358, 2016).

Worldwide: 200 species, more or less cosmopolitan, but especially southern temperate zones

Botswana: 6 taxa.