Description :

• Robust annual, erect, much-branched, ± glabrous herb
• Leaves membranous, coarsely sinuate-dentate or almost lobed
• Flowers solitary, on slender pedicels
• Calyx 5-partite, much enlarged and inflated in fruit, prominently 5-winged, scarious-membranous; lobes cordate, subsagittate, wide, conniving, reticulate
• Corolla widely campanulate; limb very shortly or obscurely 5-lobed; lobes or folds very narrowly imbricate
• Stamens 5, arising near corolla base; filaments filiform, dilated at base into a pilose scale; anthers ovate-oblong; thecae parallel, dehiscing longitudinally
• Ovary 3-5-locular; style columnar; stigma oblong or subglobose, 3-5-partite, lobes conniving; ovules many
• Fruit a globose berry, much shorter than the enlarged calyx
• Seeds suborbicular, compressed, minutely scrobiculate; embryo near margin, much curved; cotyledons semiterete
• x = 10

Nomenclature:

• *Nicandra Adans.
  • Adanson: 219 (1763)
  • Wright: 108 (1904)
  • Henderson & Anderson: 268 (1966)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 1: * Nicandra physalodes (L.) Scop., Peru, now naturalised in most warm countries
• Southern Africa : Mainly eastern parts