Description:

• Annual or short-lived perennial herbs, rarely small shrubs; stems erect or sometimes procumbent, branched, sometimes woody; stems and leaves ± densely covered with mucilage glands and hairs
• Leaves opposite, petiolate; lamina very variable, circular, ovate, cordate, reniform or lanceolate, hastate or 3-lobed, often polymorphic; margins ± entire, crenate or serrate; upper and lower leaves often much smaller and simpler
• Flowers solitary, axillary, on short pedicels, pendent; white, pink or lilac, throat usually less intensely coloured
• Calyx much shorter than corolla tube, suboblique, glandular-pilose
• Corolla glandular-pilose; tube curved and slightly gibbous on adaxial side at base, funnel-shaped; limb sub-bilabiate, oblique, most lobes short and subequal, ovate, anterior lobe larger, often yellow, with dark stripes or lines of dark spots running down into the throat
• Stamens subdidynamous, included; filaments linear; anthers oblong-linear, thecae parallel; staminodes 0
• Nectary annular
• Ovary equally 2-locular, falsely 4-locular because of a false septum almost to apex; oblong, with 2 divergent horns at apex, glandular-villous; ovules many in 1 series per compartment; style subterete; stigma of 2 lanceolate lobes
• Fruit a capsule compressed at right angles to septum, obtuse or truncate at apex with 2 lateral horns
• Seeds many, compressed, obovate, with shallow groove round edges and testa usually black when ripe
• x = 8 (1 report, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Ceratotheca Endl.
  • Endlicher: 5, t. l, 2 (1832)
  • Stapf: 462 (1904)
  • Phillips: t. 87 (1923)
  • Ihlenfeldt: 43, t. 4 (1967a)
  • Ihlenfeldt: 593 (1967b)
  • Merxmüller & Schreiber: 2 (1968)
  • Abels: 5 (1975)
  • Ihlenfeldt: 94 (1988)
  • Ihlenfeldt: 1063 (1994)
• Sporledera Bernh.
  • Bernhardi: 41 (1842) not of Hampe
  • Bentham: 1059 (1876)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 5, Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 4, widespread, except for Lesotho: 1 mainly in eastern half, Griqualand West (E Northern Cape) and Eastern Cape, 3 in small northern areas of Namibia, Botswana and Northern Province