Description:

• Small, perennial herbs; roots sometimes with red, yellow or orange pigments; stem a short rhizome
• Leaves rosulate, petiolate or sessile, obovate, spathulate or broadly ovate to lanceolate, mostly entire and ± glabrous above, pubescent beneath; venation palmate
• Flowers pedicellate, axillary, either in short racemes, usually pedunculate, sometimes branched, sometimes arising from centre of rosette on a ± sessile inflorescence, or rarely flowers solitary
• Bracts usually opposite, lanceolate, oblong or oval
• Calyx tubular, 5-toothed, accrescent; tube campanulate or turbinate, sometimes plicate; lobes subequal, pubescent mainly on veins or ± pilose, shorter than tube
• Corolla bilabiate, 4- or 5-lobed; tube funnel-shaped, pubescent within throat; posterior lip hooded, entire or shortly bilobed, exterior in bud; anterior lip 3-lobed, longer than posterior
• Stamens 4, didynamous; upper pair included under hood, with filaments short, straight, arising at top of corolla tube; lower pair with filaments longer, arising ± in throat, geniculate and with yellow appendage at base, bent forwards and inwards above; anthers bithecate, approximating or cohering in pairs; thecae divaricate; staminodes 0
• Nectary 0
• Ovary bilocular, ellipsoid or elliptical; ovules many; style filiform, ± exserted, persistent; stigma capitate, of 2 membranous lobes, papillose, touch-sensitive
• Fruit an ovoid or ellipsoid, septicidal capsule
• Seeds globose; testa thin, brown, reticulate and punctate, epidermal cells thin-walled; endosperm alveolate and bothrospermous (with small hollows and nonfurrowed)

Nomenclature:

• Craterostigma Hochst.
  • Hochstetter: 668 (1841)
  • Hiern: 360 (1904)
  • Hepper: 53 (1990)
  • Fischer: 85 (1992)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 9; Arabian Peninsula, Socotra, India, Madagascar, tropical and southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Species ± 4, widespread, mainly in northeastern parts, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape (Mkambati); usually in seasonally wet soils over rock, remaining dormant in dry season