Description:

• Perennial herbs, subshrubs, shrublets or shrubs, often twining or scrambling, often succulent, with clear or milky sap
• Leaves sometimes reduced to small rudiments or spines
• Corolla rotate to tubular; aestivation in bud typically dextrorse or valvate
• Stamens with filaments fused into a tubular staminal column (gynostegium) enclosing gynoecium; anthers adaxially fused to style head; anthers 2-locular, spreading, erect or ± horizontal, with lateral margins of adjacent anthers forming distinct gynostegial grooves (guide rails or anther slits); pollen gathered in pollinia, 1 per theca, with waxy outer wall; pollinia attached in pairs (one each from adjacent anthers) by a flexible, translucent caudicle (translator arm) to a small, spherical, hard, brown to black corpuscle (corpusculum, carrier, translator, retinaculum, gland, pollen carrier or clip), to form a pollinarium
• Corona: outer corona of 5 lobes, frequently present at or near base; inner corona usually at or just below base of anthers, usually of 5 lobes
• Nectary in 5 alternisepalous troughs
• Ovary superior (half-inferior), of 2 apocarpous carpels; style head broad, often with flat or convex apex with 5 presumed stigmatic zones located on sides of lower cylindrical part behind gynostegial grooves
• Fruit a pair (often only 1 by abortion) of ventrally dehiscent follicles with dry pericarp; in Ceropegieae generally with delayed development
• Seeds many, flattened, often with wing-like margins, mostly with micropylar coma (tuft of hairs)

Classification Notes:

• The hybrid genus X Hoodiapelia is not included
• In most recent accounts (e.g. Bruyns & Forster 1991, Liede & Albers 1994) the tribe Ceropegieae is referred to as the Stapelieae Decne. in Candolle: 606 (1844). However, Ceropegieae Orb. (Dictionnaire universel d'histoire naturelle 3: 339) of 1843 predates this and is therefore the correct name for this tribe.

Nomenclature:

• Asclepiadoideae
  • Brown: 295 (1902)
  • Brown 385 (1903)
  • Brown: 518 (1907)
  • Brown: 673 (1908)
  • Brown: 865 (1909)
  • Huber: 1 (1967)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Genera 62 (63)

References:

• BROWN, N.E. 1902. Asclepiadeae. Flora of tropical Africa 4,1
• BROWN, N.E. 1903. Asclepiadeae. Flora of tropical Africa 4,1
• BROWN, N.E. 1907. Asclepiadeae. Flora capensis 4,1
• BROWN, N.E. 1908. Asclepiadeae. Flora capensis 4,1
• BROWN, N.E. 1909. Asclepiadeae. Flora capensis 4,1
• HUBER, H. 1967. Asclepiadaceae. Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika 114

Resources:

• Key to Apocynaceae Subfamilies
• Classification of Asclepiadoideae
• Key to Asclepiadoideae tribes and genera

• Asclepiadoideae tribes:

• Asclepiadoideae genera: