Description :

• Perennial herbs, with woody rootstock
• Leaves opposite or rarely in whorls of 3, sessile or shortly petiolate, linear to round; stipules 3-5-fid or setose, adnate to petiole, persistent
• Flowers dimorphic, some flowers with anthers included and style exserted and others completely vice versa; in terminal, pedunculate, spikes or heads
• Calyx hairy, persistent, 3-5-lobed, 1-3 lobes foliaceous and others small or 0; tube shallow
• Corolla 5-lobed, blue, hairy; lobes oblong, apiculate, shorter than tube; tube cylindric, becoming campanulate above, villous within
• Stamens 4 or 5, arising deep in corolla tube; filaments ± as long as linear anthers
• Disc annular
• Ovary 2-locular, with a solitary pendulous ovule in each locule; style filiform; stigma of 2 filiform arms
• Fruit dry, globular, slightly lobed, ovoid or compressed-obcordate, indehiscent or tardily dehiscent into cocci, or subglobose and rather succulent
• Seeds small, compressed
• x = 10 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Pentanisia Harv.
  • Harvey: 21 (1842)
  • Sonder: 24 (1865)
  • Hooker: 104 (1873)
  • Hiern: 131 (1877)
  • Phillips: 729 (1951)
  • Verdcourt: 233 (1952)
  • Verdcourt: 167 (1976)
  • Verdcourt: 57 (1989)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 15, tropical Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 3, Northern Province, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho and Eastern Cape