Description: Perennials with erect, trailing or more rarely twining branches, often rooting at the nodes.
Leaves simple, entire; hairs simple.
Flowers axillary, solitary or in simple cymes, bracteolate. Sepals 5, free, equal to very unequal. Corolla funnel-shaped, limb entire to shallowly 5-lobed with hairy mid-petaline bands. Stamens 5, subequal, filaments with scattered tubercles or short hairs about and above the point of attachment. Ovary laterally compressed, 1-locular with 2 ovules, glabrous; style 1, with a much-divided stigma bearing 4–12 linear lobes.
Capsule globose, 1-locular with a crescent-shaped partial septum, initially 2-valved.
Distribution and occurrence: World: c. 7 species, Timor, Australia, New Caledonia, Australia: c. 7 species (all but 1 species endemic), Qld, N.S.W., N.T., W.A.
Text by R. W. Johnson
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Stems erect; leaves mostly less than 8 mm wide, apex usually acute, glabrous to silky; bracteoles more than 2.5 mm long | Polymeria longifolia |
| Stems trailing or twining; leaves to 20 mm wide, apex usually rounded to emarginate, mostly glabrous but if hairy then not silky; bracteoles less than 2.5 mm long | 2 |
| 2 | Stems trailing, rooting at nodes; flowers pink, mostly 6–8 mm long; sepals 3–4 mm long, more or less equal | Polymeria pusilla |
| Stems trailing and twining; flowers purple-violet, 7–15 mm long; sepals 6–12 mm long, outer ones broader than inner ones
Back to 1 | Polymeria calycina |
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