Description:

• Shrubby climbers with milky sap
• Leaves with few colleters at juncture of petiole and blade
• Corolla: lobe aestivation dextrorsely contorted or valvate; corolline corona of 5 fleshy ridges usually present near mouth of tube
• Stamens with filaments fused into a tubular staminal column (gynostegium) enclosing gynoecium; anthers 4-locular, erect to ± horizontal, adaxially fused to sides of style head; lateral margins of adjacent anthers forming distinct gynostegial grooves (guide rails or anther slits); pollen in 4 minute pollinia (2 per theca); pollinia ± erect, attached by ± obsolete caudicles to soft, white corpuscle usually larger than pollinia
• Corona (gynostegial): outer corona rarely present as small ridge beneath gynostegial grooves, inner arising at or slightly below base of anthers
• Nectary in 5 alternisepalous troughs
• Ovary half-inferior; style head broad, with 5 presumed stigmatic areas on sides of lower cylindric part
• Fruit a pair of fusiform, ventrally dehiscent follicles
• Seeds many, flattened, with micropylar coma (tuft of hairs)

Nomenclature:

• Secamonoideae
  • Takhtajan: 434 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Genera 1

References:

• TAKHTAJAN, A. 1997. Diversity and classification of flowering plants. Columbia University Press, New York

Resources:

• Key to Apocynaceae Subfamilies

• Periplocoideae genus: Secamone