Description from Flora of China
Herbs mostly perennial, some possibly annual, biennial, or monocarpic perennial (suspected rather than demonstrated), forming erect individuals, cespitose clumps, cushions, or sprawling mats, lacking basal bulbils. Leaves alternate, very rarely opposite, petiolate or not; leaf blade herbaceous or carnose, lacking chalk glands and crystals, margin usually entire, occasionally toothed or lobed. Flowering stem usually leafy; inflorescence cymose or flower solitary. Flowers sometimes unisexual, actinomorphic, 5-merous. Petals usually yellow or orange, occasionally white, pink, or red, sometimes spotted orange, red, or purple, very often with callosities. Filaments subulate to linear; pollen 3-nucleate, exine tectum finely striate. Carpels connate for most of placental region, dehiscing distally in fruit; ovary subsuperior to subinferior. Integuments 2.
About 175 species: Asia, Europe, North America, mainly in arctic and montane regions; 166 species (112 endemic) in China.