From the Greek for Sun Flower and referring to the fact that the flowers open only in sunshine.

Evergreen or semi-evergreen herbs or subshrubs, mostly with star-shaped hairs. Leaves mostly opposite with each pair at right angles to the next, often with upper ones alternate, entire, mostly narrow, stipules sometimes present. Flowers in simple or compound terminal clusters. Sepals 5, enlarging in fruit, outer pair smaller. Petals 5, sometimes small or absent, often with yellow or orange basal spot. Stamens numerous. Ovary with 3 placentae; style thin, curved. Fruit a 3-valved ovoid capsule with the stalk often bent back.

In Australia this genus is grown largely as a range of colour cultivars. There is a group of cultivars raised by Bert Alsop of Belgravia Avenue, Box Hill North, Melbourne: 'Belgravia', 'Belgravia Plum', 'Belgravia Rose', 'Belgravia Tangerine'. Other cultivars available (assumed to be the results of hybridisation between H. apenninum, H. croceum and H. nummularium) include: 'Ben Fhada', 'Ben Vane', 'Cerise Queen', 'Chocolate Blotch', 'Coppernob', 'Golden Pyramid', 'Jubilee', 'Rose of Leeswood', 'Supreme', 'The Bride', 'Venustum Plenum'.

Seed, division, softwood cuttings.

Flowers red to pink, orange, yellow or white often with yellow or orange blotch; sepals 5; style thin and generally curved or bent.

The OPCA National Collection of Helianthemum is held at the Garden of St Erth, Blackwood, Victoria and in 1990 included about 20 cultivars.

About 110 species mostly Mediterranean, N and S America.

Procter (1956), Garnett (1990).

Source: Spencer, R. (1997). Cistaceae. In: Spencer, R.. 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.