Description:

• Large foetid shrubs with whitish bark; branches usually somewhat curved, brittle, ribbed by decurrent leaf bases when young, glandular-puberulous on uppermost parts
• Leaves opposite and decussate, sometimes fascicled, lanceolate, acute; base tapering into petiole, subentire to serrate, base of petiole persistent, decurrent down stem in 2 narrow ridges, glandular-puberulous
• Flowers pedicellate, 1-many in axils of leaves or bracts, forming a terminal thyrse
• Calyx obscurely bilabiate, 5-lobed nearly to base, glandular-puberulous
• Corolla bilabiate, 5-lobed, persistent; tube narrowly funnel-shaped or subcylindrical, mouth laterally compressed, elliptical, posterior side of tube with band of unicellular clavate hairs from mouth to base; posterior lip 2-lobed, exterior in bud; anterior 3-lobed; lobes spreading, suborbicular, glandular-puberulous outside, inside minutely glandular around mouth
• Stamens 4, didynamous; posterior ones included, with filaments decurrent to base of tube; anterior ones arising in throat, exceeding posterior pair, very shortly exserted; anthers synthecate, dorsifixed, thecae transversely kidney-shaped
• Nectary not conspicuous, possibly very shallowly annular
• Ovary bilocular, deltoid, glabrous; ovules many per locule; stigma bifid, just reaching mouth
• Fruit a septicidal capsule, each valve with a short loculicidal split at tip
• Seeds ± ellipsoid, brown; testa thin, reticulate

Nomenclature:

• Manuleopsis Thell.
  • Thellung: 405 (1915)
  • Merxmüller & Roessler: 33 (1967)
  • Hilliard: 78 (1994)
• Freyliniopsis Engl.
  • Engler: 609 (1922)
  • Merxmüller & Roessler: 33 (1967)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Monotypic: Manuleopsis dinteri Thell., Namibia from Kaokoveld, Otavi and Tsumeb south to the Naukluft Mountains and due east ± 150 km to Kalkrand