Description:

• Perennial herbs with woody rootstock, branched from base, rarely above
• Leaves subsessile, slender, with minute colleters in leaf axils
• Flowers in pseudoumbels lateral at nodes, with peduncles racemosely scattered along upper part of branches
• Sepals with row of scales within base
• Corolla lobed to halfway or more, greenish; lobes spreading or erect, slightly overlapping to left in bud, with upper surface bordered with woolly hairs and pubescent within
• Corona of 5 lobes, arising from staminal column; lobes ± complicate or fissured on inner surface, and projected into 2 short horns directed over staminal column
• Staminal column arising from base of corolla
• Anthers 2-locular, with membranous appendages deflexed on column, bluntly spurred at base
• Pollinia terete, attached horizontally to corpuscle by caudicles
• Follicles ± ellipsoid, rounded and smooth on outer side, grooved on inner side
• Seeds convex on one side, concave on other, tapering to apex, with tuft of hairs

Nomenclature:

• Kanahia R.Br.
  • Brown: 28 (1810)
  • Brown: 295 (1902)
  • Field et al.: 787 (1986)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 4, Africa and Arabian Peninsula
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Kanahia laniflora (Forssk.) R.Br., Northern Province, in rocky watercourses