General description:- Annual or perennial herbs, usually glabrous and fleshy.

Leaves:- Simple, entire.

Flowers:- Solitary or in cymes, hermaphrodite. Sepals 2; petals 4-6, free or joined below; stamens 3 to many. Ovary unilocular, with 1 to many campylotropous ovules on a basal placenta.

Fruit:- A capsule.

PORTULACA

General description:- Glabrous, fleshy herbs.

Leaves:- Alternate or opposite wit small, setaceous stipules.

Flowers:- Often terminal. Petals falIing early (fugacious); stamens numerous; ovary semi-inferior.

Fruit:- Capsule single celled (unilocular), with thin wall, splitting open to release the seeds. (dehiscing) with a transverse lid. Seeds numerous, kidney-shaped (reniform).

Key features:-
1) Stamens numerous.
2) Ovary semi-inferior.