Herbs or shrubs, mostly foul-smelling when crushed and often with glandular hairs. Leaves simple or compound, mostly palmate. Flowers in racemes or solitary, irregular, green to white, pink or purple; petals 4, mostly with a long base; stamens usually 6, long. Ovary often on a stalk (gynophore). Fruit a capsule opening by 2 valves with the partition remaining.
Foul smell; stalked ovary; spidery appearance of flowers.
About 150 species mostly from tropical and subtropical species.
Source: (1997). Capparaceae. 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.
