Description:

• Perennial or annual herbs or shrubs with milky sap
• Leaves opposite or whorled, usually sessile
• Flowers in pedunculate or occasionally sessile umbels, lateral at nodes and terminal
• Sepals usually with scales within base
• Corolla rotate, tube very short, deeply 5-lobed
• Corona of 5 lobes arising from near base of staminal column; lobes erect or radiating, laterally compressed, cucullate or compressed-cucullate or with a fissure down inner face, sometimes with 1(2) horns or other process within cavity and rarely with a dorsal lobule or reflexed horn
• Anthers 2-locular, with terminal, membranous, incumbent or erect appendage
• Pollinia pendulous, ellipsoidal; caudicles shorter than pollinia
• Follicles usually solitary by abortion, globose to fusiform, smooth or with processes on surface
• Seeds brownish, oblong, convex on back and concave on face, or flattened and narrowly winged, usually with protuberances, with tuft of hairs at micropylar end
• x = 11 (10, 12)

Classification Notes:

• Trachycalymma pulchella is recognised as Asclepias pulchellum, but the remainder of the genus which occurs outside the FSA region, is retained in Trachycalymma (K.Schum.) Bullock

Nomenclature:

• Asclepias L.
  • Linnaeus: 214 (1753)
  • Brown: 663 (1907)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 150, Africa, Arabian Peninsula, America
• Southern Africa: Species ± 50, widespread