Description:

• Tall lianas with stems up to 20 m or longer; roots tuberous
• Leaves large, ovate, base cordate, apex caudate, petiolate, midgreen; interpetiolar stipules (colleters?) well developed, frill-like
• Inflorescences many-flowered in axillary paniculate cymes
• Flowers with gynostegium exserted from corolla
• Sepals ovate
• Corolla subrotate; lobes broadly ovate with obtuse apex, green outside, reddish brown to maroon inside with basal yellow-green nectariferous spot
• Corona lobes arising at corolla mouth, free, fused with staminal filaments basally, broadly obcordate, white, with or without pinkish brown dorsal, corniculate segment
• Stamens arising from base of corolla; filaments free; anthers 4-locular, triangular, glabrous, apically connivent and connate in a white cone over style head
• Style head broadly angularly obovoid
• Follicles narrowly ovoid, obtuse, widely to horizontally divergent
• Seeds obliquely ovate, keeled on both faces, with apical tuft of hairs

Nomenclature:

• Mondia Skeels
  • Skeels: 45 (1911)
  • Bullock: 203 (1961)
• Chlorocodon Hook.f.
  • Hooker: t. 5898 (1871)
  • Brown: 254 (1904)
  • Brown: 541 (1907)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 2, tropical Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Mondia whitei (Hook.f.) Skeels, KwaZulu-Natal; lianas of the tree canopy of riverine and swamp forest