Description :

• Shrubs, often with scandent branches, or ± woody climbers
• Tendrils leaf-opposed, sometimes 0
• Leaves simple or 3-foliolate, rarely digitately 5-foliolate, usually petiolate, margins entire or variously toothed; stipules usually present
• Flowers in condensed, leaf-opposed thyrsoid cymes; peduncles occasionally cirrhose; buds subglobose
• Calyx entire or slightly lobed
• Corolla green, greenish yellow, yellow or cream; petals (4)5 or 6, thickened or fleshy at apex
• Disc thick, entire, with ovary immersed in it
• Stamens as many as petals, conspicuously bending over gynoecium
• Ovary with 2 incompletely separated locules, each with 2 ovules; style simple; stigma capitate
• Fruit subglobose, glabrous, often warted
• Seeds 1 or 2(-4), smooth or rugose, usually with a conspicuous longitudinal dorsal furrow and with or without basal projection
• x = 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Rhoicissus Planch.
  • Planchon: 463 (1887)
  • Phillips: 492 (1951)
  • Wild & Drummond: 444 (1963)
  • Retief: 231 (1993)
  • Verdcourt: 8 (1993)
• Cissus L. in part
  • Harvey: 249 (1860)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 10, in Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 7 in the eastern parts, absent from Namibia, Botswana and Northern Cape