Description :

• Perennial herbs or subshrubs; stems erect or straggling from a fibrous or woody rootstock
• Leaves paired or whorled, usually lanceolate, elliptic or linear; stipules multipartite, segments colleter-tipped
• Flowers mono-, di- or trimorphic; usually in dense, complex cymes
• Calyx 5-lobed; lobes equal or unequal, some accrescent in fruit; tube campanulate-turbinate
• Corolla 5-lobed, white; lobes equal or somewhat unequal; tube cylindric or ± funnel-shaped, sometimes campanulate above, bearded in throat
• Stamens 5; in monomorphic flowers enclosed in an abrupt apical dilation of tube and style exserted; in dimorphic flowers tube gradually dilated at apex in short-styled flowers, and abruptly dilated in long-styled flowers
• Disc present, sometimes becoming obconic
• Ovary 2-locular, with many ovules in each locule attached to semiglobose placentas on septum; style filiform; stigma of 2 glandular, terete lobes, or thickened and terete
• Fruit a 2-valved, ribbed, beaked capsule, opening at apex into 4 valves; sometimes separating into 2 cocci
• Seeds usually subglobose, often 3-winged, reticulate or honeycombed
• x = 10 (9) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Pentas Benth.
  • Bentham: t. 4086 (1844)
  • Hiern: 45 (1877)
  • Verdcourt: 237 (1953)
  • Verdcourt: 66 (1989)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 34, Africa to Arabian Peninsula and Madagascar
• Southern Africa : Species 2: Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal