Description:

• Monoecious, scabrid, prostrate, rarely scandent herbs, often turning black on drying
• Leaves orbicular, deeply cordate, 5-7-lobed or -partite, with a large stipuliform bract at base of petiole
• Tendrils simple
• Male flowers in racemes, in same axil as female ones: calyx 5-lobed, with short tube, lobes subulate; corolla rotate, 5-parted, segments ovate; stamens 3, free, filaments short, anthers small, one 1-thecous, others 2-thecous, thecae straight; pistil 0
• Female flowers solitary, shortly pedicelled, in same axil as male ones: bracts stipule-like, orbicular or oblong, toothed or ciliate; calyx and corolla as in male; staminodes 0; ovary ovoid, with few ovules on 2 or 3 placentas, style columnar, stigmas 2 or 3
• Fruit small, subglobose or subquadrate in outline, oblique, 2-few-seeded, indehiscent
• Seeds ovoid, strongly compressed, boat-shaped or concave above, convex beneath, smooth, with an acute margin

Nomenclature:

• Ctenolepis Hook.f.
  • Hooker: 832 (1867)
  • Jeffrey: 460 (1978)
• Blastania Kotschy & Peyr.
  • Kotschy & Peyritsch: 15 (1867)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 2, Old World tropics
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Ctenolepis cerasiformis (Stocks) Hook.f., N Botswana and Mpumalanga