Description:

• Shrubs or subshrubs; branches usually glabrous with ribs due to decurrent leaf bases
• Leaves opposite, verticillate or scattered, usually variously linear or lanceolate to ovate, sometimes obovate or oblanceolate, sessile to shortly petiolate, elliptical or mostly acute, often apiculate or mucronate, entire, or rarely toothed in upper half, flat, undulate or crisped, base sometimes decurrent, midrib usually prominent, often leathery
• Flowers solitary or in terminal and axillary cymes, shortly pedicellate, usually bracteate and bracteolate
• Bracts usually similar to leaves but smaller
• Calyx campanulate, 5-lobed; lobes ovate, elliptic or lanceolate, imbricate
• Corolla 5-lobed, regular; tube funnel-shaped or subcylindrical, straight, exceeding calyx; limb patent, regular; lobes much shorter than tube, spreading, obtuse, imbricate, 2 posterior lobes exterior in bud
• Stamens 4, didynamous, included or scarcely exserted; filaments terete or linear, arising ± at or above middle of corolla tube; anthers with 2 ± parallel, erect thecae; staminodes sometimes 1, rudimentary
• Nectary saucer- or cushion-shaped
• Ovary bilocular, ellipsoid; ovules several; style thick, linear, scarcely exserted, with capitate or globose stigma
• Fruit an ovoid, obtuse, septicidal capsule; valves bifid
• Seeds discoid with a membranous wing and testa

Nomenclature:

• Freylinia Colla
  • Colla: 56 (1824)
  • Hiern: 214 (1904)
  • Van Jaarsveld: 57 (1983)
  • Philcox: 20 (1990)
  • Van Jaarsveld: t. 2033 (1991)
  • Van Jaarsveld: 68 (1995)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 9, tropical (1) and southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 9, 1 in Northern Province (Waterberg), rest in Western and Eastern Cape; usually montane habitats