Description :

• Twining perennial herbs
• Leaves petiolate, simple, cordate-subacuminate
• Flowers in long, pedunculate corymbs or racemes, sublateral at nodes
• Sepals with scales within base
• Corolla 5-lobed to ± halfway; tube cylindric to campanulate; lobes elliptic, fimbriate or ciliate
• Corona 2-seriate; outer corona arising at base of staminal column, membranous, annular, 5-lobed; inner corona lobes 5, erect, fleshy, adnate to base of staminal column, free above, horn-like, incurved, produced into a spreading, deflexed spur or pouch at base
• Staminal column arising in mouth of corolla tube and exserted
• Anthers terminated by a transversely oblong, membranous appendage inflexed over style head
• Pollinia transversely oblong, pendulous, with obsolete caudicle
• Style head 5-angled, dome-shaped
• Follicles somewhat ovoid, sometimes acuminate, smooth or echinate
• Seeds ovate, with toothed marginal wing, hairy
• x = 11 (aneuploids)

Nomenclature:

• Pergularia L.
  • Linnaeus: 135, 191 (1767)
  • Brown: 757 (1908)
  • Huber: 48 (1967)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 5, Africa to India and Madagascar
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Pergularia daemia (Forssk.) Chiov.; widespread except in Free State, Lesotho, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape