Description :

• Perennial herbs with a single annual stem arising from a vertical tuber; latex milky
• Stem branched below, erect or ascending, glabrous or minutely pubescent with short, white hairs
• Leaves petiolate, linear, acute, base truncate or rounded, pubescent with spreading white hairs
• Inflorescences terminal or extra-axillary, umbels erect, borne on long or short peduncles
• Calyx lobed to base
• Corolla rotate to campanulate, outer face greenish, chrome-yellow within
• Staminal column with stipe 1-2 mm long
• Corona of 5 lobes arising above base of staminal column; erect and somewhat fleshy, appearing concave-cucullate for most of its length but in fact solid except for papillose, proximal and upper margins, inner apical margins extending over head of column as a pair of teeth, cavity sinus without a well-developed central tooth, glabrous except along midline of cavity towards base of lobe
• Anthers 2-locular; corpuscle subcylindrical, black; caudicle with a membranous, convex and somewhat contorted proximal portion broadening abruptly into a short clasping overlap with pollinium; pollinia flattened, oblong
• Style head flat
• Follicles single, erect, fusiform, beaked, not inflated, smooth, minutely pubescent when young, glabrous at maturity; fruiting pedicel not contorted
• Seeds ovate with a verrucose disc and a narrow inflated rim; tuft of hairs of silky hairs

Nomenclature:

• Stathmostelma K.Schum.
  • Schumann: 129 (1893)
  • Goyder: 607 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 13, in eastern tropical Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Stathmostelma fornicatum (N.E.Br.) Bullock subsp. fornicatum , Botswana