Description :

• Annual herbs, erect, slender, hemiparasitic on roots, turning dark on drying; stems simple or branched, glabrous, smooth
• Leaves opposite or upper ones alternate, simple and filiform or pinnatisect with filiform segments
• Flowers axillary or supra-axillary, pedicellate, bracteate and bibracteolate, in terminal racemes
• Bracts opposite, leaf-like; bracteoles arising from ± middle of pedicel to just below calyx
• Calyx tubular, 5-cleft or deeply 5-lobed; tube short and wide, campanulate; lobes ovate at base, filiform at tip, valvate in bud
• Corolla tubular, ± regular, 5-lobed, exserted, long persisting around maturing capsule; tube long, straight or curved, ± cylindrical below, abruptly widening above, with stalked glandular hairs outside; limb spreading; lobes equal or subequal, elliptic or obovate, imbricate, posterior lobes interior in bud
• Stamens 4, ± equal, arising all at one level in upper part of corolla tube, included; filaments short, linear, bearded at base; anthers erect, dorsifixed, unithecate, without evidence of second theca
• Ovary bilocular, globose or ovoid; ovules many; style linear, usually ± as long as corolla tube, hence exceeding stamens; stigma lingulate
• Fruit usually a ± distinctly beaked capsule, vertically somewhat compressed, held erect or oblique, loculicidal along both sutures or rarely one, enclosed in persistent calyx
• Seeds many, cylindrical or obovoid; testa reticulate, membranous

Nomenclature:

• Rhamphicarpa Benth. emend. Engl.
  • Bentham: 368 (1836)
  • Engler: 361 (1895)
  • Hiern: 398 (1904) in part
  • Hansen: 103 (1976)
  • Philcox: 135 (1990)
  • Mielcarek: 172 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 6, mostly Africa, some India and Australia
• Southern Africa : Species 2: Rhamphicarpa fistulosa (Hochst.) Benth. and R. brevipedicellata O.J.Hansen, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal; often near rivers and grassy swamps or vleis and pan margins