7414.000 Solandra Sw.

Scandent shrubs, high climbing hemi-epiphytes or large stemmed lianes, unarmed. Stems mostly glabrous, stout with no apparent pith, sometimes with flaking bark, often with aerial roots; twigs stout with a large pith. Leaves alternate, lamina simple, margins entire, membranous, coriaceous or somewhat succulent. Inflorescence with flowers solitary or few-flowered clusters, terminal at ends of twigs or on short shoots; pedicels stout; calyx mostly tubular, angled and sometimes inflated, deeply splitting in flower into 2-5 irregular lobes; corolla imbricate, often very large, fleshy, mostly glabrous, campanulate, often slightly zygomorphic, lobes entire to fimbriate and often recurved. Fruit a berry, leathery, loosely enclosed by the ruptured calyx. Seeds many, reniform.

Derivation of name: after Daniel Charles Solander (1733-1782), a Swedish botanist.

Worldwide: 10 species in tropical America.

Zimbabwe: 1 cultivated taxon.