Description :

• Shrubs or woody climbers; bark often becoming corky with age
• Leaves opposite, rarely ternate, shortly petioled; axillary glands 2-6, rarely more, subulate, scale-like or conical; stipules 0
• Inflorescence terminal, often at end of branchlets, corymbose, many- or few-flowered or reduced to solitary flowers
• Flowers mostly showy
• Calyx divided to base with few to many glands at base within; sepals imbricate, linear or linear-lanceolate, sometimes foliaceous
• Corolla funnel-shaped or campanulate, with a short or long cylindric, basal tube; mouth with paired appendages alternating with lobes; lobes much longer than tube, attenuate, linear or produced into filiform, usually spirally twisted, appendages
• Stamens inserted deep in corolla tube; filaments short, linear; anthers 4-locular, conniving in a cone, lanceolate, acuminate, with a long or short, apical appendage, bluntly or acutely sagittate at base, with foot of connective produced into an appendage or horizontal ridge and often hairy at base
• Disc 0
• Ovary of 2 free carpels with many ovules in each; style filiform, shorter than stamens; stigma capitate, 5-grooved, with membranous, reflexed frill at base and a minutely bifid apiculus
• Mericarps 2, follicular, divaricate, oblong or spindle-shaped, sometimes pustulate
• Seeds spindle-shaped, or flat and lanceolate, with an apical, plumose awn, and with or without a deciduous, basal tuft of hairs at maturity
• x = 10 (9, 11)

Nomenclature:

• Strophanthus DC.
  • Candolle:122, t. 8 (1802)
  • Stapf: 509 (1907)
  • Codd: 289 (1963)
  • Beentje: 468 (1985)
• Cercocoma Wall. ex G.Don
  • Don: 84 (1837).
• Christya Ward & Harvey
  • Ward & Harvey: 134 (1842).
• Roupellia Wall. & Hook.
  • Wallich & Hooker: t. 4466 (1849).
• Zygoneurion Baill.
  • Baillon: 758 (1888)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 38, Asia, Africa, Madagascar, 30 species in Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 6, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape