Description:
Subshrubby herbs (suffrutices) or shrubs, completely softly tomentose, mostly much branched. Leaves opposite, or less often in whorls of 3, shortly petioled; stipules with triangular or sheathing connate bases and subulate appendages. Flowers relatively large, in subsessile or shortly pedunculate, dense, few- to many-flowered cymes. Calyx: tube globose with a short +/- subundulate limb or short, triangular teeth. Corolla thick, cylindric or obovoid, obtuse or shortly acuminate at apex in bud; mostly yellow or greenish, densely tomentose; tube cylindric, glabrous or hairy at throat, with a ring of deflexed hairs inside; lobes reflexed, obtuse or shortly apiculate. Stamens inserted at throat; anthers exserted or partly exserted. Ovary (3)4- or 5-locular, each locule with a pendulous ovule; style slender, exserted; pollen presenter cylindric or coroniform, sulcate, (3)4- or 5-lobed at apex. Fruit drying black, globose, crowned with calyx limb, sometimes ribbed, containing (3)4 or 5 pyrenes, +/- glabrous. Pyrenes thinly woody, not crested around apex, point of attachment +/- beaked, very slightly textured. Cotyledons very much shorter than radicle.
Distribution:
Species 3, trop. Africa; sthn trop. Afr. 2, Angola, Zambia, Malawi.
Source:
SSTA
Classification:
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