Description :

• Suberect, rambling, twining or scandent herbs or suffrutices
• Leaves ovate to lanceolate, sometimes cordate or hastate
• Inflorescence terminal, compound monochasial cymes or thyrses or of solitary, axillary flowers with long pedicels; bracts 2, large, elliptic or ovate, surrounding each flower and hiding calyx
• Calyx regular, usually with a shallow tube with 10-18 linear teeth or rarely shallowly cupular with 5 broad lobes
• Corolla regular or subregular; lobes 5, obovate, spreading, contorted in bud; tube much longer than lobes, usually cylindric at base, funnel-shaped above
• Androecium : fertile stamens 4, didynamous (arising in pairs) or subdidynamous; arising in lower part of corolla tube, included; filaments broadly linear; anthers 2-thecous; thecae parallel, each apiculate or with 1 apiculus and 2-spurred at base, with connective usually produced into an appendage, ciliate, or covered with multicellular hairs, which are sometimes club-shaped; staminodes 0
• Pollen spheroidal; 3-colpate, surface foveolate, pusticulate or spinose
• Disc deeply cupular
• Gynoecium : ovary with 2 ovules in each locule; style terete, included; stigma funnel-shaped, with 2 infolding lobes and a tuft of hairs on each lobe and with stalked glands or stigma of 2 unequal lobes, one above the other
• Fruit a globose capsule, abruptly rostrate, estipitate, with inelastic placental bases; retinacula 0
• Seeds thick, broadly elliptic, with a cavity or groove on one face and convex on the other; surface rugose and sometimes tuberculate
• x = 8, 9 (7, 10) (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Thunbergia Retz.
  • Retzius: 163 (1780) name conserved
  • Retief & Reyneke: 107 (1984)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 100, Old World tropics
• Southern Africa : Species 11, Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland and northern and eastern provinces of South Africa