Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs, hemiparasitic on roots, turning dark in drying; stems ± erect, simple or branched, usually hispid
• Leaves opposite or alternate, sessile to shortly petiolate, variously ovate, lanceolate or linear, entire or toothed, sometimes scale-like or aborted
• Flowers solitary in axils of leaves or bracts, sessile to shortly pedicellate, bibracteolate, usually densely subspicate, yellow or orange with darker veins
• Bracts leaf-like; bracteoles 2, close under calyx
• Calyx campanulate, 5-lobed to ± halfway, 10-veined or -ribbed, not accrescent in fruit; lobes subequal
• Corolla tubular, subregular, 5-lobed to ± halfway, thin, longer than calyx, early marcescent (withering) but persistent within calyx around capsule; tube often with globose base, then narrowly campanulate, slightly oblique; lobes subequal, rounded, recurved or later twisted up, posterior lobes interior
• Stamens 4(5), didynamous, at times subequal, arising about middle or near base of corolla tube, included; filaments linear, sometimes curved and/or bearded in various parts; anthers bithecate, coherent or connivent in pairs, thecae equal or unequal, apiculate or not; staminodes 0
• Ovary bilocular, compressed, orbicular or ovoid, glabrous; ovules many on thick, axile placentas; style linear; stigma broader, recurved, rarely flat and membranous, included
• Fruit a globose to broadly ovoid or compressed, loculicidal capsule, included within calyx
• Seeds very many, linear or clavate, straight or curved, slender, truncate; testa transparent, membranous, reticulate, open at either end

Nomenclature:

• Alectra Thunb.
  • Thunberg: 81 (1784)
  • Bentham: 966 (1876)
  • Hemsley & Skan: 362 (1906)
  • Melchior: 423 (1941)
  • Hepper: 405 (1960)
  • Henderson & Anderson: 288 (1966)
  • Merxmüller & Roessler: 5 (1967)
  • Visser: 82, 156, tt. 129-147 (1981)
  • Hilliard & Burtt: 371 (1986)
  • Philcox: 85 (1990)
  • Fischer: 45 (1996)
  • Mielcarek: 85 (1996)
• Melasma P.J.Bergius in part
  • Hiern: 371 (1904)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 40, Asia, tropical and southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Species ± 17, widespread