Description:

• Annuals, suffrutices, rarely shrublets
• Stems erect to straggling, simple or branched at apex, occasionally much-branched, rarely radicant
• Leaves cauline and in a basal rosette (sometimes soon deciduous); the cauline ones opposite, usually in distant pairs, linear, linear-lanceolate, ovate-lanceolate to ovate-cordate, sometimes much reduced, sessile, or amplexicaul, rarely cuneate to a petiole-like base
• Flowers in a lax, few- to many-flowered cyme, sometimes solitary
• Calyx 5-lobed, lobes with a distinct midrib, sometimes with a keel decurrent on tube as a wing, without basal glands
• Corolla: tube campanulate or cylindric; lobes 5, contorted in bud, spreading, usually as long as or longer than tube, persistent and enfolding capsule like a cap, rose to magenta-pink, rarely white
• Stamens 5, arising from throat of corolla; filaments short, usually flattened with a broad base; anthers straight or twisted
• Ovary 1-locular, globose to cylindric-globose; placentation parietal; ovules many; style simple, terete, usually becoming hooked at apex; stigma subcapitate or 2-lobed
• Capsule septicidally 2-valved, rarely berry-like
• Seeds many, subglobose; testa foveolate
• x = 17 (1 report, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Chironia L.
  • Linnaeus: 189 (1753)
  • Hill & Prain: 1096 (1909)
  • Marais & Verdoorn: 212 (1963)
  • Hilliard & Burtt: 303 (1983)
  • Paiva & Nogueira: 32 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 30 throughout tropical and subtropical Africa and Madagascar
• Southern Africa: Species 16, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Northern and Eastern Cape