Description:

• Monoecious or rarely dioecious, scandent or prostrate herbs, rarely shrubs, scabrid or subtomentose
• Leaves entire or ± divided, often subcordate
• Tendrils simple
• Male flowers usually in dense or lax, pedunculate racemes: calyx shortly 5-lobed, tube broadly campanulate; corolla 5-partite, with segments ovate-oblong; stamens 5, all 1-thecous, inserted in mouth of tube or paired stamens ± united, appearing as 3 (two double 2-thecous, one single 1-thecous), thecae straight, filaments short, with connective often bifid and dilated or produced at apex; pistil minute
• Female flowers sessile or shortly pedicelled, solitary or aggregated, rarely racemose: calyx and corolla as in male; staminodes 0 or rudimentary; ovary ovoid, often beaked, 2- or 3-locular, with few ovules, style straight, stigmas (2)3(4)-lobed
• Fruit circumscissile at base, few-seeded
• Seeds obovoid, swollen or subglobose; cotyledons obovate, thick, fleshy
• x = 12 (13, 14 - 1 report) (polyploidy - 1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Corallocarpus Welw. ex Hook.f.
  • Hooker: 831 (1867)
  • Meeuse: 38 (1962)
  • Jeffrey: 485 (1975)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 15, Old World tropics, mostly African
• Southern Africa: Species 7, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape