Description:

• Holoparasitic, rootless, leafless, fungus-like plants, rich in tannins, with fleshy, terete or angular, warty, rhizome-like underground parts bearing series of vermiform outgrowths that connect to roots of host
• Flowers bisexual, or functionally unisexual, regular, large, solitary, buds developing underground, flowers usually emerging at least partly at anthesis
• Perianth: tepals 3 or 4, united into a large fleshy cylindrical tube, often swollen at base; lobes valvate with apices free and spreading or connate at their tips to form 3 or 4 elliptic to round openings; inner surface flesh-coloured to yellow, outer surface cracked, brown; on inside of each lobe a white to dark brown bait body emitting a foetid smell
• Stamens 3 or 4, alternating with tepals, arising at apex of tube; filaments absent; anthers very large, with many elongate fused thecae with longitudinal slits, together forming a lobed ring
• Ovary inferior, 3- or 4(5)-carpellate, 1-locular; ovules many, orthotropous, tenuinucellate, unitegmic, pendulous from apical placenta; style absent; stigma of 3 or 4 broad, ridged lobes
• Fruit an underground berry with thick leathery wall, baccate
• Seeds numerous, globular or ovate, very small; testa hard, thick and embedded in a fleshy edible pulp which is rich in starch; embryo small, surrounded by endosperm and perisperm
• x = 8 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Hydnora Thunb.
  • Thunberg: 69, t. 2, figs. 1-3 (1775)
  • Hooker: 108 (1873)
  • Hooker: 120 (1880)
  • Marloth: 465 (1907)
  • Baker & Wright: 131 (1909)
  • Hill: 486 (1912)
  • Vaccaneo: 411 (1934)
  • Harms: 288 (1935)
  • Adamson: 344 (1950)
  • Schreiber: 1 (1968)
  • Visser: 64 (1981)
  • Musselman: 22 (1984)
  • Musselman & Visser: 77 (1987)
  • Visser: t. 1992 (1989)
  • Meijer: 343 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 5, in arid regions of Africa, Réunion, Madagascar and Saudi Arabia
• Southern Africa: Species 3, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape
  • Parasitic on roots of Euphorbia, Acacia and Albizia lebbeck