Forstera is a genus of small perennial plants in the Stylidiaceae family named in honour of the German naturalists Johann Reinhold Forster and his son, Georg Forster, who had previously described Forstera's sister genus, Phyllachne just five years earlier.

The species in Forstera are generally erect or decumbent perennials with small imbricate leaves and pedicellate, actinomorphic flowers.

Characteristics that this genus shares with Phyllachne include apically fused thecae that form a single-celled curved anther and the epigynous nectaries.

[2] The genus Forstera was first named by Carl Linnaeus[3] and described in 1780 by Georg Forster in Nova Acta Regiae Societatis Scientiarum Upsaliensis.

By Johannes Mildbraed's 1908 taxonomic monograph on the family in Engler's Das Pflanzenreich, all four species known at the time were placed back into Forstera.