Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs, hemiparasitic on roots, turning dark on drying; stems erect to procumbent, simple to much branched; rhizomes tuberous or elongated, sometimes woody
• Leaves opposite or subopposite, sometimes alternate or in whorls of 3, sessile or shortly petiolate, linear to ovate, entire or variously dentate
• Flowers often large, axillary or supra-axillary, or in terminal spikes or racemes, pedicellate to sessile, bracteate and usually bibracteolate
• Bracts leaf-like; bracteoles, when present, usually adnate to base of calyx, rarely arising on pedicel or above base of calyx
• Calyx tubular, cylindrical or campanulate, rarely urceolate, (4)5-lobed, 10(11)-veined or -ribbed; tube straight; lobes equal or subequal, deltoid-ovate, lanceolate or linear, usually shorter than tube, rarely longer
• Corolla bilabiate, 5-lobed, large, salverform, exserted, not persisting around fruit; tube slender, elongated, subcylindrical or sometimes gradually widening above, straight or gently curving near apex, usually with throat bearded; limb spreading; upper lip 2-lobed with lobes connate higher up than rest, interior in bud; lower lip 3-lobed, lobes shorter than tube, obovate
• Stamens 4, didynamous, arising ± in middle of corolla tube, sometimes below, but pairs at 2 levels, included; filaments linear, unilaterally bearded; anthers unithecate, erect, dorsifixed; staminodes 0
• Ovary bilocular, ovate or ovoid, ± compressed, glabrous; ovules many; style terete, straight, included, not exceeding lower pair of stamens, base persistent; stigma simple, terete or compressed, linear-lanceolate, slightly thickened, ± same length as style, sometimes 2-lobed
• Fruit usually an ovoid, oblong or globose capsule, acute, apiculate or sometimes obliquely beaked and/or winged along 1 or both sutures, loculicidal along apical parts of both sutures or rarely dehiscing along upper-distal suture only, or fruit a globose to ovoid, indehiscent berry
• Seeds small, ovoid or oblong; testa reticulate or reticulate-tuberculate, rarely almost smooth, firmly connected with lower cell layers
• x = 12, 19 (1 report each, aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Cycnium E.Mey. ex Benth. emend. Engl.
  • Bentham: 368 (1836)
  • Engler: 360 (1895)
  • Hiern: 395 (1904)
  • Hansen: 1 (1978)
  • Visser: 82, 158, tt. 160-170 (1981)
  • Philcox: 137 (1990)
  • Mielcarek: 163 (1996)
• Rhamphicarpa Benth. emend. Engl. in part
  • Hiern: 399 (1904)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 15, East Africa to southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 4, widespread, except Lesotho, Northern and Western Cape