Plants annual or perennial herbs, subshrubs or small chrubs, diffusely branched. Leaves opposite, equal in size, simple or digitately compound with 1-3(-7) leaflets; stipules often becoming spiny; leaflets entire, mucronate. Inflorescences of solitary axillary flowers. Flowers pedicellate, radially symmetric, 5-merous; sepals 5, free, mucronate, imbricate, deciduous or persistent; petals 5, rosy, purplish-pink or violet rarely yellow, free, clawed, imbricate, caducous; discs minute, indistinct; stamens 10, free, in 2 whorls, inserted on disc, filaments filiform, without scales, anthers oblong; ovaries sessile, 5-loculed and 5-angled, each locule with 2 ovules; styles simple, angular; stigmas simple. Fruits capsules,deeply 5-angled, obconical, pyramidal or globular, septicidally dehiscent into 5, one-seeded units; seeds erect, broadly oblong, compressed, with horny endosperm and mucilaginous testa; embryos straight; cotyledons ovate.
Fagonia has about 30 species (World Flora Online recognizes 34), all of which grow in drier parts of Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean Region, and North America.
