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:

• Rafflesiaceae
  • Dumortier: 13 (1829)
  • Hooker: 106 (1873) as Cytinaceae
  • Hooker: 116 (1880)
  • Solms-Laubach: 1 (1901) as Rafflesiaceae
  • Hill: 485 (1912) as Cytinaceae
  • Marloth: 174 (1913) as Rafflesiaceae tribe Cytineae
  • Harms: 276 (1935)
  • Meijer: 557 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 9, species ± 55, mostly tropical, some subtropical
• Southern Africa: Genus 1, species 2

References:

• DUMORTIER, B.C.J. 1829. Rafflesiaceae. Analyse des familles des plantes. Casterman, Tournay
• HARMS, H. 1935. Rafflesiaceae tribus Cytineae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, edn 2, 16b
• HILL, A.W. 1912. Cytinaceae. Flora capensis 5,1
• HOOKER, J.D. 1873. Cytinaceae. In A. de Candolle, Prodromus 17. Masson & Sons, Paris
• HOOKER, J.D. 1880. Cytinaceae. In G. Bentham & J.D. Hooker, Genera plantarum 3. Lovell Reeve & Co., London
• MARLOTH, R. 1913. Rafflesiaceae tribe Cytineae. The Flora of South Africa 1. Darter & Co., Cape Town
• MEIJER, W. 1993. Rafflesiaceae. In K. Kubitzki, J.G. Rohwer & V. Bittrich, The families and genera of vascular plants - dicotyledons 2. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
• SOLMS-LAUBACH, H. ZU. 1901. Rafflesiaceae. Das Pflanzenreich Heft 5

Resources:

• Rafflesiaceae genus: Cytinus