Annual or perennial herbs or occasionally shrubs. Leaves alternate, entire to deeply divided; stipules small, gland-like. Flowers radially symmetrical, bisexual, stamens and fruit sometimes shortly stalked. Sepals and petals mostly 6 but often 4-8, unequal, yellow to white, the larger ones usually fringed. Petals usually with a scale-like appendage at the base. Stamens 3-40, filaments free or fused at the base. Carpels mostly 2-6, and generally fused. Ovary superior; ovules with parietal placentation. Fruit a capsule, open at the top, or berry.
Petals with a scale-like appendage at the base, fringed in cultivated species; open fruit.
6 genera with about 70 species from the northern hemisphere, mostly Mediterranean.
Source: (1997). Resedaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 2. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 1. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.
