 The genus has a subcosmopolitan distribution throughout the tropical and warm temperate regions of the world.However, a recent DNA study failed to separate "Cleome", "Podandrogyne", and "Polanisia" from each other, so some taxonomists have abandoned the last two of these genera, treating them as part of "Cleome" "sensu lato"; in this case, "Cleome" contains about 275 species, the vast majority of the Cleomaceae.The genus contains species which show an evolutionary progression from to photosynthesis.