Description:

• Large or dwarf shrubs, short-lived subshrubs or perennial herbs, male, female, bisexual, bisexual + female, or occasionally male + bisexual + female, bisexual + male, or male + female
• Leaves decussate or occasionally in whorls of 3(4), often seemingly in much larger numbers at nodes, blades ± broad and large to ± ericoid and small, mostly narrowed to base, acute to acuminate (seldom ± mucronate or ± obtuse) at apex, shortly petiolate to sessile; stipular sheaths ± cup-shaped, bearing 1 to many setae or fimbriae on either side
• Inflorescence frequently leafy and inconspicuous, made up of mostly subsessile, many- to very few-flowered cymes; in dioecious taxa often sexually dimorphic (female inflorescence contracted, ± cylinder-like)
• Flowers mostly subsessile, subtended by a pair of leafy bracts, male, bisexual or female, 4- or 5-merous
• Calyx: lobes large, conspicuous to small, indistinct or ± lacking
• Bisexual and male flowers: corolla with tube cylindrical, broadly funnel-shaped to subcampanulate, lobes recurved, ± lanceolate; anthers yellowish to whitish, exserted, dangling on long, slender, filiform filaments
• Female flowers: corolla much smaller than in male flowers; tube cylindrical; lobes mostly erect, linear to ± lanceolate
• Ovary bicarpellate, 2-locular, in 2 species 1 carpel reduced; ovule 1 per locule; style 0 or very short; stigmas usually 2, long-exserted, hairy, greyish to greenish white, seldom purplish red
• Fruit crowned by persistent calyx lobes, supported by a ± U-shaped carpophore, dehiscing into two mericarps, each convex on dorsal side, plane to concave or sometimes hollowed out and with a prominent to inconspicuous median, longitudinal ridge on ventral side
• x = 11 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Anthospermum L.
  • Linnaeus: 1058 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 479 (1754)
  • Sonder: 26 (1865)
  • Hooker: 140 (1873)
  • Schumann: 129 (1891)
  • Phillips: 735 (1951)
  • Verdcourt: 324 (1976)
  • Puff: 8 (1986)
  • Puff: 150 (1989)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 40, Africa and Madagascar
• Southern Africa: Species 21, widespread