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Succulent or subsucculent annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs, glabrous or covered with simple or stellate hairs (in Glinus lotoides). Leaves simple, alternate, opposite or verticillate, sometimes crowded, with or without stipules. Inflorescences solitary, cymose, loosely dichasial to umbelliform or glomerate, axillary or terminal. Flowers more or less actinomorphic, hermaphrodite, rarely unisexual (in Gisekia africana). Perianth-segments 5, free, imbricate, herbaceous, persistent. Staminodes often present, sometimes petaloid. Stamens 3–?, hypogynous, sometimes in pairs or fascicles, alternate with the perianth-segments when definite in number; filaments often enlarged below; anthers 2-locular, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2–5-carpellate, apocarpous (in Gisekia) or syncarpous; loculi and stigmas as many as carpels; ovules 1, few or many per loculus; placentation axile or basal. Fruit of achenes, mericarps or loculicidal capsules. Seeds usually subreniform or triangular in outline, sometimes strophiolate; embryo usually curved.