Description:

• Shrublets or herbaceous plants, rarely polygamous, with a woody rootstock, new growth usually pubescent; pubescence of stellate or tufted unicellular hairs often matted to form a thin or dense tomentum or, in the case of long, tufted hair, forming a hispid or villose pubescence, sometimes scales and short glandular hairs present as well
• Leaves simple; stipules subulate
• Flowers bisexual, rarely unisexual; axillary, or in terminal, racemose or cymose inflorescences, often reduced to a solitary flower; epicalyx bracts 3, persistent, united at base, arising subunilaterally, pubescent on both surfaces
• Calyx 5-lobed, persistent
• Petals 5, obovate, somewhat unequal-sided, convolute, hypogynous, yellow, early deciduous from base but faded flowers persisting, like a cap, with convolute apices, on capsule
• Stamens 5, alternating with 5 ligulate staminodes, connate at base, forming a short annulus or collar
• Ovary stellate-tomentose, 5-locular, ovules 1-many in each locule; style with 5 stigmatic branches, sometimes abortive in essentially male flowers
• Capsule loculicidally dehiscent
• Seeds 3- or more-sided, usually with minute, raised, broken lines or dots on surface
• x = 6 (1 report, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Melhania Forssk.
  • Forsskål: 64 (1775)
  • Harvey: 221 (1860)
  • Wild: 528 (1961)
  • Friedrich-Holzhammer, Merxmüller & Roessler: 23 (1969)
  • Verdoorn: 263 (1981)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 60, Africa to India
• Southern Africa: Species 13, in Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape