Description:

• Holoparasitic, rootless, leafless, fungus-like plants, rich in tannins, with fleshy, terete or angular, warty, rhizome-like underground parts bearing series of vermiform outgrowths that connect to roots of host
• Flowers bisexual, or functionally unisexual, regular, large, solitary, buds developing underground, flowers usually emerging at least partly at anthesis
• Perianth: tepals 3 or 4, united into a large fleshy cylindrical tube, often swollen at base; lobes valvate with apices free and spreading or connate at their tips to form 3 or 4 elliptic to round openings; inner surface flesh-coloured to yellow, outer surface cracked, brown; on inside of each lobe a white to dark brown bait body emitting a foetid smell
• Stamens 3 or 4, alternating with tepals, arising at apex of tube; filaments absent; anthers very large, with many elongate fused thecae with longitudinal slits, together forming a lobed ring
• Ovary inferior, 3- or 4(5)-carpellate, 1-locular; ovules many, orthotropous, tenuinucellate, unitegmic, pendulous from apical placenta; style absent; stigma of 3 or 4 broad, ridged lobes
• Fruit an underground berry with thick leathery wall, baccate
• Seeds numerous, globular or ovate, very small; testa hard, thick and embedded in a fleshy edible pulp which is rich in starch; embryo small, surrounded by endosperm and perisperm
• x = 8 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Hydnoraceae
  • Agardh: 31 (1858)
  • Hooker: 108 (1873)
  • Hooker: 116 (1880)
  • Solms-Laubach: 283 (1889)
  • Hill: 485 (1912) as Cytinaceae in part
  • Vaccaneo: 411 (1934)
  • Harms: 282 (1935)
  • Meijer: 341 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 2; species ± 18; in Central and South America and arid parts of Africa, Saudi-Arabia, Réunion and Madagascar
• Southern Africa: Genus 1, species 3

References:

• AGARDH, J.G. 1858. Hydnoreae. Theoria systematis plantarum. Gleerup, Lund
• HARMS, H. 1935. Hydnoraceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien II,16b
• HILL, A.W. 1912. Cytinaceae in part. Flora capensis 5,1
• HOOKER, J.D. 1873. Ordo Cytinaceae tribus Hydnoreae R.Br. In A. de Candolle, Prodromus 17. V. Masson, Paris
• HOOKER, J.D. 1880. Cytinaceae. In G. Bentham & J.D. Hooker, Genera plantarum 3,1. Lovell Reeve & Co., London
• MEIJER, W. 1993. Hydnoraceae. In K. Kubitzki, J.G. Rohwer & V. Bittrich, The families and genera of vascular plants - dicotyledons 2. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
• SOLMS-LAUBACH, H. ZU. 1889. Hydnoraceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien III,1
• VACCANEO, R. 1934. Hydnoraceae Africanae. Atti dell'Accademia nazionale dei Lincei Memorie 6, sér. 5, fasc. 10

Resources:

• Hydnoraceae genus: Hydnora