Description:

• Holoparasitic, rootless perennials, without chlorophyll, rich in tannins, with thick, somewhat fleshy, simple stems, growing on roots; monoecious or dioecious; endophytic body in the form of strings or plates of cells inside host plant
• Leaves reduced to alternating/spiralling coloured scales
• Inflorescence: flowers solitary or in short, few-flowered racemes; flowering stems or branches bursting through cortex of host tissues
• Flowers unisexual, regular, usually in axils of bracts and bracteoles; ± horseshoe-shaped nectar glands present at base of central column
• Perianth 1-whorled; tepals 4-9, fleshy, fused at base into a very short tube
• Male flowers: stamens 8-12; filaments fused into a stout capitate column with fused anthers at apex; anthers 2-thecous, extrorse
• Female flowers: ovary inferior, 1-locular or by projection of parietal placentas, falsely up to 6- or more-locular; ovules very numerous, anatropous to orthotropous, uni- or bitegmic; stylar column stout; stigma globose, grooved with apex obtuse or radially lobed
• Fruit a berry
• Seeds many, minute, hard; embryo undifferentiated; endosperm 1 layer thick
• x = 8 (1 report, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Cytinus L.
  • Linnaeus: 576 (1764) name conserved
  • Hooker: 106 (1873)
  • Hooker: 118 (1880)
  • Hill: 485 (1912)
  • Marloth: 174 (1913)
  • Harms: 276 (1935)
  • Adamson: 343 (1950)
  • Webb: 50 (1964)
  • Oliver: t. 1486 (1967)
  • Meijer: 562 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 10, Mediterranean region, Africa, Madagascar
• Southern Africa: Species 2, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape