Description :

• Perennial herbs, with fusiform roots and usually a single, unbranched, slender stem
• Leaves sessile, slender
• Flowers in 2-more-flowered, subsessile or pedunculate, lateral or terminal umbels
• Sepals 5, ovate or lanceolate, often acuminate
• Corolla cream, with urceolate or campanulate tube, sometimes with decurrent ridges within, alternating with lobes, often bearded within mouth or with 5 small tufts of hairs in throat; lobes 5, oblong or ovate, sometimes hairy on face
• Corona partly adnate to staminal column by lower, central part of face and as long as or longer than staminal column, of 5 lobes; lobes ovate, deltoid-ovate, oblong, rhomboid, or broadly cuneate, obtuse or acute, entire or 3-toothed with lateral teeth small and central tooth large or prolonged into a subulate or filiform, erect or incurved point
• Anthers 2-locular, with membranous, apical appendage
• Pollinia erect, terete, linear or oblong, sometimes curved, often pellucid on one margin; caudicles shorter than pollinia
• Follicles slender, smooth, tapering into beak
• Seeds with tuft of hairs

Nomenclature:

• Sisyranthus E.Mey.
  • Meyer: 197 (1838)
  • Brown: 786 (1908)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 13, tropical Africa and southern Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 13, widespread in grassland, excluding Namibia and Botswana