Description :

• Subshrubs or herbs, twining or climbing, sometimes from woody rootstock; monoecious
• Leaves alternate, petiolate, entire, 3-5-lobed or -partite
• Inflorescences few-flowered, surrounded by 2 large, veined and usually brightly coloured, simple or lobed bracts
• Petals 0
• Disc 0
• Male flowers : calyx splitting into 4-6 valvate lobes; stamens usually 9-30; filaments united into a short or long column; pistil 0
• Female flowers : calyx usually 6-partite; segments often coriaceous and accrescent in fruit; ovary 3(4)-locular with a single ovule in each locule, usually hairy; style simple, often thickening upwards, hollow at apex
• Fruit a 3(4)-didymous capsule, somewhat woody, breaking into bivalved cocci
• Seeds globose or ellipsoid, with raised, vein-like markings from base and with apical cap
• x = 9, 11 (1 report each)

Nomenclature:

• Dalechampia L.
  • Linnaeus: 1054 (1753)
  • Prain: 497 (1920)
  • Webster: 95 (1994)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 238 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 110, fairly cosmopolitan in warm regions
• Southern Africa : Species 4, widespread