Description :

• Holoparasitic, annual herbs attached to roots, lacking chlorophyll, variously coloured, usually ± covered with gland-tipped papillose hairs; stems solitary or fascicled, simple or branched usually from base, fleshy but slender
• Leaves alternate, mostly scale-like, upper ones sometimes bract-like, sometimes crowded near base, distant higher up
• Flowers irregular, solitary in axils of upper scales or bracts, bracteolate or not, sessile or lowest ones pedicelled, usually in many-flowered spikes or racemes, at length elongated and lax
• Calyx tubular, (2)4-lobed, membranous, shorter than corolla tube; tube campanulate with 4 lobes arising ± in middle, or divided to base at front and back into 2 subequal, usually 2-lobed parts
• Corolla tubular, ± distinctly bilabiate, 4- or 5-lobed, marcescent; tube somewhat constricted near base or at middle, usually ± funnel-shaped above, gently curved; upper lip 2-lobed or emarginate, porrect, interior in bud; lower lip 3-lobed; lobes equal or subequal, ± rounded, separated by prominent folds
• Stamens 4, didynamous, arising low down in corolla tube, ± included; filaments usually thickened or flattened towards base and surrounded by a luniform gland above point of attachment, glabrous or ± hairy at least below; anthers often cohering below stigma, bithecate; thecae usually equal, all fertile, parallel or slightly divergent, mucronate at base; staminodes 0
• Nectary obscure
• Ovary unilocular, ovoid-ellipsoid; ovules many on 4 parietal placentas; style thick and somewhat flattened, included, persistent; stigma fleshy, 2-4-lobed, sometimes obscurely so, lobes papillose above
• Fruit a bivalved, loculicidal, capsule
• Seeds very many, minute, subglobose, testa reticulate, membranous
• x = 19 (12) (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Orobanche L.
  • Linnaeus: 632 (1753)
  • Hiern & Stapf: 421 (1904)
  • Stapf: 464 (1906)
  • Henderson & Anderson: 302 (1966)
  • Roessler: P132:1 (1968) [only one]
  • Visser: 131, 164, figs 215-220 (1981) under Orobanchaceae
  • Minkin & Eshbaugh: 1 (1989)
  • Philcox: 160 (1990)
  • Brummitt: 306 (1992) under Scrophulariaceae
  • Kreutz: 44, 120 (1995)
  • Mabberley: 511 (1997) under Orobanchaceae
  • Takhtajan: 458 (1997) under Scrophulariaceae

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 150, ± cosmopolitan, temperate and warm, especially North
• Southern Africa : Species 2: * Orobanche ramosa L. and * O. minor Sm.; introduced weeds, sporadic in Namibia, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape, potentially major pests of cultivated plants