Herbs or shrubs, very rarely trees. Leaves opposite or alternate, usually stipulate. Flowers regular or irregular, generally hermaphrodite. Sepals 5, seldom fewer, free or united to the middle, imbricate or rarely valvate, posterior one sometimes spurred. Petals as many as the sepals, rarely fewer or wanting, hypogynous or slightly perigynous, usually imbricate. Torus barely expanded into a disc, with or without 5 glands alternating with the petals, usually raised in the centre into a beak. Stamens generally twice the number of the petals or fewer by suppression; filaments free or connate at the base; anthers 2-celled. Ovary 3–5-lobed, cells the same number; carpels 3–5, adnate to the axis as far as the insertion of the ovules, and often prolonged into a beak-like style or styles; ovules 1–2 to each carpel, rarely more. Fruit a 3–5-lobed capsule, often splitting from below upwards into as many 1-seeded carpels with long styles, which coil up elastically; or the capsule may be loculicidally 3–5-celled, with 2-several seeds in each cell; or more rarely the mature fruit is composed of 3–5 indehiscent 1-seeded cocci. Seeds with scanty or no albumen; embryo straight or curved.

A rather large and somewhat heterogeneous order, composed of several tribes differing in important points of structure, and often kept up as separate orders. Taken in a broad sense, it contains 20 genera and about 750 species. Probably about three-quarters of the species are natives of South Africa, but the order is also well represented in the north temperate zone. It is comparatively rare in the tropics and in Australasia. Many of the species are highly ornamental, but few of them possess any economic value. The three New Zealand genera have a wide range.

A.	Capsule beaked, splitting into 1-seeded lobes which coil up elastically along the beak. Leaves toothed or lobed. Flowers regular. Perfect stamens 10 1. Geranium. Flowers irregular, with a spur adnate to the pedicel. Perfect stamens 5–7 2. Pelargonium. page 88
B.	Capsule opening loculicidally. Leaves 3-foliolate. Flowers regular 3. Oxalis.