Shrubs, undershrubs or trees with slender, flexuous branches, rarely herbs, halophytic or xerophytic. Leaves usually small, often scale-like, alternate, simple, exstipulate, usually sessile, sometimes sheathing, rarely subsessile, generally fleshy and with
punctate salt secreting glands. Flowers in racemes, panicles, spike-like racemes or
spikes, sometimes solitary, actinomorphic, bisexual or rarely unisexual with plants
dioecious, hypogynous. Sepals 4 -
5 (- 6), free or connate at base, imbricate, persistent.
Petals 4 -
5 (- 6), free, imbricate, persistent, subpersistent or caducous. Stamens 4 -
10
(-14) or numeorus, inserted on or below the disc, free or basally connate, united up to
middle or above, or in 5 bundles, persistent, subpersistent or caducous; anthers 2-loculed, dehiscing longitudinally. Pistil 1; ovary (2 -) 3 -
4 (- 5)-carpelled, unilocular or
imperfectly septate, with parietal or basal or parietal-basal placentation, ovules 2 -
many
on each placenta, anatropous; styles (2 -) 3 -
4 (- 5), free or rarely basally connate or
absent; stigmas capitate. Fruit a capsule, pyramidal or bottle-shaped, 3 -
5 -angled and
valved, dehiscing down to the base. Seeds erect with a coma of long, unicellular hairs at
distal end or covered all over with long hairs; embryo straight; endosperm absent or
present; cotyledons flat.
Chiefly in the temperate and subtropical regions of Europe, Africa and Asia; 4
genera and ca 90 species; 3 genera with 16 species in India.
Literature.
QAlSER, M. (1982). Tamaricaceae. In: NASIR, E. & S. I. ALI, Fl.W. Pakistan 141:
1-65.
KEY TO THE GENERA
1a. Stamens connate to half or more of their length
