The genus ''Cleretum'' was erected by Nicholas Edward Brown in 1925. He published the name in a key, basing the diagnosis on a herbarium sheet that was discovered to contain parts belonging to plants in different genera and without designating a type. This caused confusion as to whether the genus had been validly published and whether genus names published later were synonyms or not. It was established in 1985 that ''Cleretum'' was validly published, and that ''Micropterum'' was a later synonym. '' Cleretum papulosum'' was designated as the type species. ''Cleretum'' is placed in the tribe Dorotheantheae. A study in 2012 concluded that the genera previously separated in the Dorotheantheae did not differ sufficiently to be recognized, and placed them all in ''Cleretum'', now the only genus in the tribe.
Species
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Plants of the World Online (POWO) is an online database published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. It was launched in March 2017 with the ultimate aim being "to enable users to access information on all the world's known seed-bearing plants by ...