Annual or perennial herbs, sometimes shrubs or trees. Stipules absent or small. Leaves alternate or whorled, basal or cauline, pinnately or palmately compound, leaflets often folded together at night, margin always entire. Inflorescences terminal or axillary, umbellate, cymose, racemose or solitary. Flowers actinomorphic, bisexual, 5-merous, hypogynous, usually heteromorphic, heterostylous. Sepals 5, free or basally connate, imbricate. Petals 5, free, sometimes basally slightly connate, convolute (contorted), nectary present. Stamens 10, obdiplostemonos, in 2 whorls of 5, outer whorl opposite petals, with shorter filaments; filaments connate near base (monoadelphous); anthers bithecous with longitudinal slits. Pistil 1, carpels 5, syncarpous; ovary superior, 5-locular, each locule with (1-)2- many ovules, axile placentation; styles 5, free; stigmas capitate or slightly 2-cleft. Fruit a loculicidal capsule or a berry. Seeds often with basal aril involved in explosive ejection of seed from capsule.

5 genera and 667 species

Averrhoa carambola

Oxalis corniculata

Oxalis dehradunensis