Shrublets, shrubs, or herbs. Stems striate or reduced to a caudex. Leaves simple, alternate or basal, sessile or petiolate but petiole usually indistinct from blade; stipules absent; leaf blade entire or rarely pinnately lobed, with chalk glands on both surfaces. Inflorescences terminal or axillary, unbranched or branched, spicate, spicate-racemose, subcapitate, capitate, or paniculate, arranged into complanate spikes if branched, all composed of 1--10 or more cymules or helicoid cymes; cymules or helicoid cymes usually known as spikelets, 1--5-flowered; bracts 1 at base of each spikelet; bractlets 1 or 2 at base of each flower. Flowers bisexual, actinomorphic, sessile or very shortly pedicellate. Calyx persistent, hypogynous, tubular to funnelform, 5-ribbed, 5-lobed. Corolla hypogynous, petals connate but sometimes only at base, lobes or segments 5 and twisted. Stamens opposite corolla lobes, hypogynous or inserted at corolla base; anthers 2-locular, dehiscing longitudinally. Pistil 1. Ovary superior, 1-locular. Styles 5, free or connate. Stigmas 5. Ovule 1, pendulous from a basal funicle. Capsules usually enclosed within calyx. Seeds 1 per capsule; embryo straight, surrounded by thin starchy endosperm.

About 25 genera and 440 species: worldwide, main diversity in C Asia and Mediterranean region; seven genera and 46 species (11 endemic) in China.

Armeria labradorica Wallroth subsp. sibirica (Turcznaninow) Kamelin is expected to be found in Altay Shan near the border with Mongolia and/or Russia.

Peng Ze-xiang (as Peng Tse-hsiang) in Li Shu-gang (as Lee Shu-kang), ed. 1987. Plumbaginaceae. Fl. Reipubl. Popularis Sin. 60(1): 1-47.

(Authors: Peng Ze-xiang; Rudolf V. Kamelin)