Description:

• Climbers, erect to scrambling shrubs or shrublets, or geophytic herbs with watery or milky sap; roots often tuberous
• Leaves with interpetiolar lines, ridges or clustered colleters adaxially at juncture of petiole and blade
• Flowers often fragrant
• Calyx persistent
• Corolla: lobe aestivation usually dextrorse
• Corona double; outer corona of 5 free or fused, epipetalous lobes; inner corona of free or fused interstaminal discs
• Stamens: filaments free or fused to outer or inner corona; anthers 4-locular, fused to style head, nearly horizontal to ascending, connectives apically pronounced, apiculate or variously shaped, connivent over style head; pollen shed in T-shaped to rhomboidal, decussate or linear tetrads
• Nectaries in 5 alternisepalous troughs at base of filaments
• Ovary half-inferior; carpels 2, free except towards base and at apex where they are fused and dilated into style head with 5 embedded, semi-erect to erect translators consisting of spoon- to cornet-shaped receptacle (into which pollen is shed), with small sticky viscidium at lower end (which may become attached to pollinator); style head enclosed in corolla tube or exposed from it
• Fruit a pair of cylindrical-ovoid follicles or a solitary follicle by abortion
• Seeds many, compressed, obliquely ovate to oblong, with micropylar coma (tuft of hairs), seldom with a ring of hairs or a membranous wing.
  

Nomenclature:

• Periplocoideae
  • Schlechter: 23 (1924)
  • Brown: 518 (1907) under Asclepiadaceae
  • Bullock: 503 (1957)
  • Huber: 1 (1967)
  • Liede: 233 (1997)
  • Venter & Verhoeven: 705 (1997)
  • Verhoeven & Venter: 1 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Genera 7

References:

• BROWN, N.E. 1907. Asclepiadeae. Flora capensis 4,1
• BULLOCK, A.A. 1957. Notes on African Asclepiadaceae - VIII. Kew Bulletin 12
• HUBER, H. 1967. Periplocaceae. Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika 113
• LIEDE, S. 1997. Subtribes and genera of the tribe Asclepiadeae (Apocynaceae, Asclepiadoideae) - a synopsis. I 46
• SCHLECHTER, R. 1924. Periplocaceae. Notizblatt des Botanischen Gartens und Museums zu Berlin 9
• VENTER, H.J.T. & VERHOEVEN, R.L. 1997. A tribal classification of the Periplocoideae (Apocynaceae). Taxon 46
• VERHOEVEN, R.L. & VENTER, H.J.T. 1998. Pollinium structure in Periplocoideae (Apocynaceae). Grana 37

Resources:

• Key to Apocynaceae Subfamilies
• Classification of Periplocoideae
• Key to Periplocoideae tribes
• Key to Periplocoideae genera

• Periplocoideae genera: