Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs or undershrubs, hemiparasitic on roots; stems usually erect, rigid, branched, often ribbed because of decurrent leaf bases, glabrous, scabrid, woolly or tomentose, sometimes in longitudinal bands
• Leaves opposite or verticillate, or upper alternate, linear to linear-lanceolate, entire or dissected with linear or filiform segments
• Flowers solitary in axils of bracts, in racemes or spikes; pedicellate or not; bracteoles 2, close to calyx
• Calyx campanulate or hemispherical, 5-lobed; variously hairy without and within; lobes valvate in bud, linear-triangular to broadly deltate, longer or shorter than tube
• Corolla usually short, at times exserted, sometimes subrotate, 5-lobed; tube short to very short, subcampanulate, enlarged at throat; limb spreading; lobes broad, elliptical, subequal, entire, longer than tube, 2 upper lobes inside in bud
• Stamens 4, didynamous, arising in throat of corolla tube, exserted or shortly included; filaments linear; anthers bithecate, all coherent or together in pairs; thecae unequal with one perfect, ovoid or ellipsoid, the other much smaller, linear or clavate, shortly stalked, ± barren
• Ovary bilocular, subglobose or elliptical; ovules many on thick, planoconvex placentas; style elongated; stigma simple or subclavate
• Fruit an oblong, ovoid, subglobose or ellipsoid capsule, rounded or compressed and retuse, emarginate or obtuse at apex, loculicidal
• Seeds subglobose, oblong to obovoid, sometimes linear and curved; testa membranous, reticulate or ribbed, rather loose
• x = 9

Nomenclature:

• Sopubia Buch.-Ham. ex D.Don
  • Don: 88 (1825)
  • Hiern: 385 (1904)
  • Hansen: 543 (1975)
  • Visser: 82, 158, tt. 153-155 (1981)
  • Philcox: 143 (1990)
  • Mielcarek: 199 (1996)
  • Hofmann & Fischer: 299 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 25-30, Himalayas to Indo-China and Taiwan, tropical Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 4, widespread but not in Northern Cape