[3] Phyllanthus has a remarkable diversity of growth forms including annual and perennial herbs, shrubs, climbers, floating aquatics, and pachycaulous succulents.

It has a wide variety of floral morphologies and chromosome numbers and has one of the widest range of pollen types of any seed plant genus.

[7] This enlarged version of Phyllanthus might eventually be divided into smaller genera,[8][9] including 32 Chinese (and northern Indochinese) species.

[11] Two fossil seeds of a Phyllanthus species have been extracted from borehole samples of the Middle Miocene fresh water deposits in Nowy Sacz Basin, West Carpathians, Poland.

[22] Particularly for its content of tannins, P. emblica fruit has a history of use in traditional medicine and is under study for its potential biological properties.