Description:

• Annual herb, sometimes biennial, erect with spreading branches; stems square, slightly fleshy and minutely glandular
• Leaves opposite, long-petiolate, circular to ovate, slightly lobed or sinuate, basally truncate or slightly cordate, subsucculent, glabrous above, sparingly glandular below
• Flowers solitary, axillary; yellow-green to white
• Calyx much shorter than corolla tube; segments lanceolate, glandular
• Corolla: tube with large, posterior, flattened sac at base, centrally cylindrical and funnel-shaped at mouth; limb spreading, obscurely 2-lipped; lobes transversely oblong
• Stamens didynamous, arising about middle of corolla tube, included; filaments long, terete, glandular-villous at base; anthers with thecae divergent, connective apiculate; staminode 1
• Nectary thick, cushion-like, slightly asymmetrical
• Ovary 2-locular, 4-angled, glandular; locules undivided with ± 8 ovules in each, in 2 rows, ascending; style terete, scarcely exserted; stigma of 2 ovate, somewhat crenate lobes
• Fruit indehiscent, rotund to circular in lateral view, ± rectangular in cross section, each edge with a broad parchment-like wing with conspicuous, usually dark, reticulate veins; mesocarp not spongy
• Seeds flattened, obovate, with a narrow, ribbed, marginal wing; testa finely honeycombed

Nomenclature:

• Holubia Oliv.
  • Oliver: t. 1475 (1884)
  • Stapf: 457 (1904)
  • Phillips: t. 661 (1937)
  • Ihlenfeldt: 43. t. 7 (1967)
  • Ihlenfeldt: 89 (1988)
  • Ihlenfeldt: 1063 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Monotypic: Holubia saccata Oliv., southern Africa and Zimbabwe
• Southern Africa: Northern Province to E North-West and N Mpumalanga