Description :

• Large shrubs, all parts stellate-pubescent or glabrescent, sometimes with intermixed simple hairs
• Leaves 3-7-angled or -lobed, palmately nerved, crenate-dentate, crenate or serrate; stipules deciduous, subulate or setaceous
• Flowers in extra-axillary or leaf-opposed umbels on longish peduncles in upper axils; bracts similar to stipules
• Sepals 4, lanceolate, deciduous
• Petals 4, oblanceolate, eglandular
• Stamens many, with nodose filaments; outer stamens often sterile and moniliform; androgynophore obsolete
• Ovary 4- or 5-locular; ovules many; style slender, glabrous with a 4- or 5-toothed stigma
• Fruit a globose, oblong-ovoid or ellipsoid, 4- or 5-valved capsule, covered with rigid bristles
• x = 8 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Sparrmannia L.f.
  • Linnaeus: 41 (1782)
  • Candolle: 503 (1824)
  • Harvey: 223 (1860)
  • Wild: 78 (1963)
  • Wild: 29 (1984)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 7, confìned to Africa and Madagascar
• Southern Africa : Species 2, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Western and Eastern Cape