Description: Perennial shrubs or herbs with a perennial rootstock, rarely annuals; branches usually prostrate, decumbent or twining.
Leaves mostly alternate, entire, sagittate or hastate.
Inflorescences spike-like, often few-flowered. Flowers bisexual. Perianth segments 5, usually glabrous. Stamens 1–3. Ovary superior.
Fruit with an inflated or loose pericarp, either succulent or becoming dry; seed horizontal, embryo almost circular.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 6 species, Australia & New Zealand. Australia: 4 species, all States.
Text by S. W. L. Jacobs
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Leaves linear, lanceolate or narrow-sagittate | 2 |
| Leaves ovate or ovate-hastate | 3 |
| 2 | Fruit becoming red and succulent | Einadia nutans |
| Fruit remaining hard and dry, not red and succulent
Back to 1 | Einadia polygonoides |
| 3 | Fruit usually succulent, red | Einadia hastata |
| Fruit dry, neither succulent nor red
Back to 1 | Einadia trigonos |
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