Description:

• Slender shrubs, becoming climbers, with tendrils in axils of upper leaves, glabrous
• Leaves petiolate, dimorphic, either simple, ovate-elliptic and entire, or linear-elongate with irregularly undulate-crenate margin; petiole short, with two glands near apex
• Flowers bisexual, in short, axillary, racemose clusters towards ends of branches; bracts lanceolate; buds subglobose; hypanthium short and broad
• Sepals 3 or 4, broadly imbricate, with narrow, membranous margin
• Petals 3 or 4, similar to sepals, but slightly smaller
• Corona single, of many terete, tapering filaments ± as long as stamens, ± connate at base into a tube with short frills at their base within and inside tube
• Stamens 6-8, with filaments shortly connate at base and with short, alternate lobes or 'glands' from within united base; anthers large, ± sagittate at base, dorsifixed, obtuse or mucronulate at apex with introrse dehiscence
• Ovary shortly stipitate, narrowly ovoid or oblong, with numerous ovules on 4 parietal placentas; stigmas 4, thickened and grooved
• Fruit a 3- or 4-valved capsule, shortly stalked, glabrous
• Seeds compressed with smooth, shiny testa

Nomenclature:

• Schlechterina Harms
  • Harms: 148 (1903)
  • De Wilde: 118 (1976)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 1: Schlechterina mitostemmatoides Harms, tropical east Africa into NE KwaZulu-Natal