Description :

• Scandent herb, monoecious, usually slender, variably pubescent
• Leaves petiolate, undivided to palmately 3-5-lobed
• Tendrils simple
• Flowers small, yellow, pedicellate
• Male flowers solitary or fascicled: receptacle cylindric-campanulate, hispid; sepals dentiform or subulate; corolla rotate to campanulate, with oblong segments; stamens 3, subsessile in middle of receptacle, dorsally attached in their middle, anthers slightly cohering or free, linear or oblong, two 2-thecous, third 1-thecous, thecae straight, obtuse, connective narrow, usually toothed at apex; pistil rudimentary, gland-like
• Female flowers solitary, rarely with male in same axis: calyx and corolla as in male; staminodes 3, sometimes stamens appearing fertile; ovary fusiform, oblong or ellipsoid, setulose, with 3 placentas and numerous horizontal ovules, style columnar, surrounded by disc at base, stigma 3-lobed, lobes usually fringed
• Fruit relatively small, indehiscent, ellipsoid or ovoid, covered with hairy or bristly protuberances, intermingled with setae, many-seeded
• Seeds compressed, ovate, marginate

Nomenclature:

• Oreosyce Hook.f.
  • Hooker: 548 (1871)
  • Meeuse: 21 (1962)
  • Jeffrey: 470 (1978)
• Hymenosicyos Chiov.
  • Chiovenda: 62 (1911)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Probably monotypic: Oreosyce africana Hook.f., Africa and Madagascar
• Southern Africa : Northern Province