Description:

• Woody or rarely herbaceous lianas, sometimes with succulent stems
• Leaves simple, peltate, triangular, ovate or suborbicular
• Inflorescences: umbelliform cymes, which are sometimes condensed to disciform capitula, often cauliflorous, rarely panicles
• Male flowers: sepals 6 or 8, in 2 whorls, mostly subequal, concave, obovate; petals 3(4), free, similar to sepals, rarely 0; stamens 2-6, arranged in a disc-shaped stalked synandrium; anthers sessile, confluent into a single ring around margin, with transverse dehiscence
• Female flowers similar to male, but sepals 1-8, free; petals 2-4, free; staminodes usually 0; carpel l; style small or 0; stigma shortly lobed or divided into 3-6 branches
• Drupe with exocarp smooth, glabrous or hairy; endocarp bony, horseshoe-shaped, laterally concave with 2-4 longitudinal rows of tubercles or transverse ridges; condyle obovate, somewhat concave on either side with its septum smooth, imperforate
• Seed curved, with endosperm; cotyledons appressed
• x = 11, 12, 13

Nomenclature:

• Stephania Lour.
  • Loureiro: 608 (1790)
  • Bentham: 37 (1862)
  • Miers: 12 (1866)
  • Oliver: 46 (1868)
  • Miers: 210 (1871)
  • Baillon: 42 (1872)
  • Prantl: 84 (1891)
  • Diels: 259 (1910)
  • Troupin: 20 (1956)
  • Troupin: 169 (1960)
  • Troupin: 237 (1962)
  • Troupin & Gonçalves: 24 (1973)
  • Benvenuto: 50 (1974)
  • Kessler: 415 (1993)
• Homocnemia Miers ex Harv.
  • Miers: 36 (1851)
  • Harvey.: 10 (1860)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 30, in tropical Africa 5, in S India to Middle and South China to New Guinea 25
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Stephania abyssinica (Dill. & Rich.) Walp. with 2 varietal forms from tropical Africa to southern Africa, widespread, except Namibia and Botswana