Description:

• Perennial herbs, usually dwarf, with a single tuber or a cluster of fusiform roots; with 1-few annual stems, prostrate to erect, rarely twining
• Leaves sessile or petiolate
• Flowers in a terminal umbel or umbel-like cyme or 1-several together, lateral at nodes, pedicellate, rarely shortly pedunculate
• Sepals often with scales within base
• Corolla campanulate to flattish, sometimes ± tubular; lobes longer or shorter than united base, variously spreading, or united at tips and forming a cage-like structure
• Corona arising from staminal column, 2-seriate or sometimes appearing 1-seriate, longer or shorter than staminal column; outer corona of distinct lobes bifid or divided almost to base, or cup- or saucer-shaped, forming pockets between base of inner lobes, with 5 or 10 teeth or lobules, occasionally reduced to cushion-like thickenings; inner corona lobes opposite anthers, usually linear-oblong, erect or incumbent, rarely clavate
• Anthers 2-locular, incumbent or inflexed on staminal column or suberect, oblong or subquadrate, without apical appendage
• Pollinia subglobose, oblong or suborbicular, sometimes compressed, erect or horizontal, sometimes largely exposed in each anther theca; caudicles short; corpuscle hard, often winged
• Follicles fusiform, smooth, green, sometimes mottled
• Seeds oblong, convex on one side, flat or concave on other, with narrow, marginal wing, crowned with tuft of hairs
• x = 11

Nomenclature:

• Brachystelma R.Br.
  • Brown: t. 2343 (1822)
  • Brown: 833 (1908)
  • Phillips: 607 (1951)
  • Dyer: 1 (1980)
  • Dyer: 12 (1983)
• Dichaelia Harv.
  • Harvey: 241 (1868)
  • Bullock: 358 (1953)
  • Huber: 28 (1967).
• Brachystelmaria Schltr.
  • Schlechter: 50 (1895).
• Aulostephanus Schltr.
  • Schlechter: 451 (1896).
• Blepharanthera Schltr.
  • Schlechter: 146 (1913).
• Kinepetalum Schltr.
  • Schlechter: 149 (1913).
• Siphonostelma Schltr.
  • Schlechter: 148 (1913)
  • Huber: 52 (1967)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species over 100, Africa, India to Australia
• Southern Africa: Species ± 80, widespread, but rarely common