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Plants herbaceous, perennials, with milky juice, glabrous, growing submersed or with floating leaves, in fresh waters. Roots fibrous, few to many, non-septate, from a stout rhizome or stolon. Stems fleshy, erect, unbranched, internodes without spinulose teeth, tips without turions or tubers. Leaves basal or alternate, petiolate; petioles terete to triangular, mostly 3 or more times length of blade, sheath without auricles, intravaginal scales absent; blades without pellucid markings, margins entire, venation reticulate, with parallel primary veins from base of blade to apex and reticulate secondary veins. Inflorescences scapose, terminal, erect to floating, an involucrate umbel without subtending spathe, involucre of few to several bracts, bracts membranous. Flowers hypogynous, perfect, pedicellate; perianth actinomorphic, of 6 separate segments in 2 series, sepals 3, persistent, mostly erect and enclosing flower and fruit, petals 3, deciduous; stamens 6 to many, separate, anthers 2-locular, basifixed, dehiscing by longitudinal slits; pollen 3-7 aperturate, globose, separate; gynoecium of 3 to many separate carpels, carpels 1-locular, each with numerous anatropous or campylotropous ovules, placentation laminar, styles short or absent, stigma linear. Fruit a follicle, dehiscing adaxially; seeds numerous, glandular pubescent or costate, U-shaped; endosperm helobial in development, absent in mature seed.


Guianas present, Neotropics present, Pantropical present
A pantropical family, consisting of 3 genera, of which 2 in the Neotropics, and 8 species, of which 7 in the Neotropics; in the Guianas 1 species.


Lemée () treats Limnocharis flava (L.) Buchenau as occurring in French Guiana, with reference to Aublet (). Aublet only gives a short diagnosis, no plate. Up to the present, no specimen from French Guiana has been found. From its general distribution, however, L. flava could be expected in the Guianas.