Aerial, hemiparasitic shrubs up to perhaps 1 m high; stems puberulent to densely pubescent
Leaves alternate, rarely in small fascicles, oblong-oblanceolate to elliptical, glabrous or pubescent; petioles 2-3 mm long
Flowers 5-merous, solitary, sessile-subsessile, 1 or 2 in axils
Corolla yellow-green, sometimes with red, gamopetalous, radially symmetrical (without unilateral split); tube expanding upward to at least twice the basal diameter; lobes 2 or 3 times as long as tube
Filaments arising slightly below midpoint of lobe, distal portion only coiled following anthesis, coiled portion ± twice as wide and thick as proximal, erect portion
Style filiform; stigma ovoid
Berry unknown
Nomenclature:
Actinanthella Balle
Balle: 1625 (1954)
Wiens & Tölken: 34 (1979)
Polhill & Wiens: 99 (1998)
Distribution & Notes:
Global: Species 2, endemic to southeastern and southern Africa; without obvious close relatives
Southern Africa: Species 1: Actinanthella wyliei (Sprague) Wiens, found only in the Ngoya Forest Reserve in central KwaZulu-Natal
References:
BALLE, S. 1954. Sur quelques Loranthoidées d'Afrique. Bulletin des séances de l'Institut Royal Colonial Belge 25
POLHILL, R. & WIENS, D. 1998. The mistletoes of Africa. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
WIENS, D. & TÖLKEN, H. 1979. Loranthaceae. Flora of southern Africa 10,1
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Welcome to Biodiversity Advisor 2.0!
Biodiversity Advisor, developed by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and its Data Partners, is a system that will provide integrated biodiversity information to a wide range of users who will have access to geospatial data, plant and animal species distribution data, ecosystem-level data, literature, images and metadata.
The integrated information comes from our much-loved Botanical Database of Southern Africa (BODATSA) also known as Plants of Southern Africa (POSA), Zoological Database of Southern Africa (ZODATSA), Biodiversity Geographic Information System (BGIS), SANBI's institutional repository (Opus) and others.
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