Shrubs, subshrubs or small trees, often heath-like. Leaves alternate and overlapping, small, simple, mostly incurved; stipules absent or minute. Flower clusters axillary or in terminal daisy-like heads, occasionally in spikes or open clusters. Flowers bisexual, regular, 5-parted, calyx with 5 lobes. Petals free or united at the base into a tube, white or pink to lilac or red. Ovary superior to inferior, with 1-3 chambers, each containing 1-12 pendulous ovules; styles 1-3, free or united. Fruit dry, capsular or achene-like, mostly with 1-2 seeds.
A small family with listed members but used primarily as cut flowers for floristry.
Berzelia lanuginosa (L.) Brongn., Button Flower, from S Africa is popular with florists; it is very similar to the above, growing to 2 m tall, with overlapping needle leaves to 1 cm long, but with slightly smaller, creamy white flower heads in stalked clusters, and with an ovary of 1 style and 1 chamber containing 1 ovule.
11 genera with about 69 species from S Africa, mainly on the Cape.
Semi-hardwood cuttings or seed.
Heath-like plants with needle leaves and generally dense flower heads.
Source: (2002). Bruniaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 3. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 2. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.