Description :

• Aerial, hemiparasitic shrubs of relatively small size, usually less than 0.5 m high, glabrous
• Stems buff-coloured with usually dense lenticels and often greatly swollen, floriferous nodes; wood a dull pink (in living plants); haustorium expanding laterally and proximally along cambium from point of infection and enlarging with age and penetrating into xylem and erupting through cortex near shoots
• Leaves mostly alternate, blades usually elliptic
• Inflorescence a 2-6-flowered umbel with short peduncles and pedicels less than 2 mm long, solitary in axils or fascicled on older swollen nodes
• Flowers 5-merous, gamopetalous, bilaterally symmetrical by the presence of a unilateral, V-shaped split ± as long as erect lobes
• Calyx cupular to tubular
• Corolla with conspicuous basal swelling, mostly yellow sometimes bands of red, white, pink, and pale green in various combinations
• Filaments coiled or curved at anthesis, with 2 minute (0.5 mm long) lateral appendages or teeth present 1-2 mm below anthers
• Style filiform; stigma capitate
• Berry red, usually ovoid, occasionally verrucose
• x = 9

Nomenclature:

• Oncocalyx Tiegh.
  • Van Tieghem: 258 (1895)
  • Polhill & Wiens: 101 (1998)
• Odontella Tiegh.
  • Van Teighem: 259 (1895)
  • Balle: 161 (1968)
  • Balle: 4 (1969)
  • Wiens & Tölken: 28 (1979)
• Tieghemia Balle
  • Balle: 1062 (1956)
  • Wiens & Tölken: 23 (1979)
  • Germishuizen: t. 1997 (1989)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 13, widespread mostly in the arid regions of tropical Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 3, Namibia, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape