Description :

• Scrambling shrubs or subshrubs, almost glabrous; branchlets terete to 4-angled, lenticelled
• Leaves imparipinnately compound, without tendrils, opposite, petiolate; leaflets elliptic-ovate, entire or remotely toothed; pseudostipules 0
• Flowers large, in terminal panicles
• Calyx cupular-campanulate, evenly 5-lobed, inflated; tube ridged, glabrous; lobes almost as long as tube, ovate, apiculate, ciliate
• Corolla somewhat bilabiate and vertically compressed, pink or lilac; tube campanulate above a short cylindrical base, glabrous outside, glandular within on lower part, with stalked hairs, pilose in throat; lobes obovate
• Stamens 4, didynamous, arising at top of narrow portion of corolla tube, included; filaments subterete, with stalked glands on basal part; anthers with 2 thecae connate only at apex, straight, divaricate when mature; staminode 1
• Nectary thick, saucer-shaped, somewhat crenate
• Ovary linear, ± cylindrical, tapering into style, glabrous, bilocular; ovules many, in 6-8 rows per locule; style semiterete, slightly exserted; stigma with two ± oval lobes
• Fruit a long, narrow, linear, straight capsule, with acute apex, somewhat flattened, leathery, smooth, dehiscing perpendicularly to septum
• Seeds with 2 ± rectangular wings; testa membranous

Nomenclature:

• Podranea Sprague
  • Sprague: 449 (1904)
  • Verdoorn: t. 1347 (1961)
  • Gentry: 122 (1977)
  • Diniz: 79 (1988)
  • Gentry: 111 (1992)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 1 or 2, Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Podranea ricasoliana (Tanfani) Sprague, from Port St Johns (Eastern Cape); possibly conspecific with P. brycei (N.E.Br.) Sprague, from Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique