Annual or perennial herbs or small shrubs. Leaves fleshy or scale-like, opposite or alternate, exstipulate or with membranous stipules. Flowers usually bisexual, actinomorphic, perigynous or epigynous. Calyx tubular, 4-8 lobed. Petals more commonly absent or numerous and linear. Stamens 5 to many, the outer ones petaloid staminodes; filaments free or basally connate, anthers bilocular, dehiscing longitudinally. Pistil monocarpellary or 2-5-carpellate, syncarpous; ovary inferior or semi-inferior, 1-5-locular or multilocular, placentation axile, parietal or basal, with usually many ovules per loculus. Fruit a berry, a loculicidal capsule or of 1-seeded dehiscent or indehiscent parts. Seeds endospermic.

120 genera and about 1170 species

Cleretum bellidiforme

Mesembryanthemum cordifolium

Trianthema potulacastrum

Zaleya pentandra