Description:

• Herbs, holoparasitic on roots, whole plant lacking chlorophyll, usually coloured; root system modified into a haustorium attached to host; stems usually subterranean, short, simple, erect or ascending, somewhat fleshy, sometimes almost woody
• Leaves scale-like, imbricate, scattered or dense, adpressed to stem, suborbicular, ovate or elliptical, usually enlarging gradually up stem
• Flowers many, rather large, showy, sessile or very shortly pedicellate, bracteate and bibracteolate, in ± dense, terminal or subterminal spikes, these sometimes subcorymbose to subcapitate
• Calyx tubular, 5-lobed, sometimes deeply so, or 5-cleft, rarely cleft nearly to base at back; lobes unequal or ± equal, usually with 2 pairs joined high up and odd one free
• Corolla tubular, ± cylindrical to obovoid, irregular, bi- or unilabiate, usually 3-lobed or 3-dentate, exceeding calyx; tube ± curved forwards or nearly straight; limb sometimes ± arched, hooded or almost helmeted; lobes much shorter than tube, often obscure, sometimes with 2 forming a hood and 1 small lobe, together forming an oblique to vertical, slit-like or gaping mouth; posterior lobes probably interior in bud
• Stamens 4, didynamous or nearly equal, arising about or below middle of corolla tube, sometimes at base, included or slightly exserted; filaments linear, glabrous, pilose or villous at base; anthers approximated in pairs, pendulous, blunt or scarcely mucronate at base, glabrous, unithecate
• Ovary bilocular, oval, ovoid-conical or subglobose; ovules very many; placentas geminate or bifid, prominent; style linear, slightly exserted, bent downwards above, glabrous, exceeding stamens; stigma thickly clavate or subglobose, emarginate or somewhat 2-lobed
• Fruit a subglobose, fleshy capsule, at length deliquescent
• Seeds very many, minute, globose; testa loose, reticulate

Nomenclature:

• Hyobanche L.
  • Linnaeus: 155 (1771)
  • Hiern: 415 (1904)
  • Merxmüller & Roessler: 25 (1967)
  • Visser: 82, 163, tt. 200-209 (1981)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species ± 7, widespread, but scattered and uncommon, not in Botswana, Northern and North-West Provinces, Gauteng or Mpumalanga