Entry From
Flora of Tropical East Africa, page 1, (2008) Author: S.A. GHAZANFAR, F.N. HEPPER & D. PHILCOX
Information
Annual, white parasitic ?perennial, drying black; stems simple, erect, 8–20 cm high, sparsely glandular-pubescent. Leaves (bracts) fleshy, brittle when fresh, opposite, broadly ovate, 2–23 long, 15–16 mm wide, base cuneate, apex subacute, minutely glandular-pubescent. Flowers white, in racemes, solitary in the axils of leafy bracts; bracteoles 1 or 2 or absent, attached halfway on the pedicel, oblanceolate to linear-lanceolate; pedicels thick and fleshy, 7–10 mm long, glandular-pubescent. Calyx tubular to campanulate, 18–23(–25) mm, obscurely 5-angled, unequally 5-lobed; lobes triangular, ± 5 mm, acute. Corolla white with yellow throat, 40–45 mm long (incl. lobes); tube narrow below, expanding above, 30–33 mm, densely glandular-pubescent ouside and inside; lobes rounded, 7–11 mm, reflexed. Filaments white, 10–12.5 mm, attached where corolla tube becomes narrow, glandular. Ovary globose, ± 5 long, ± 4.5 mm wide; style longer than the corolla tube, bent downwards at the apex; stigma clavate. Capsule subrotund, ± 10 mm long, ± 9 mm in diameter, glabrous. Seeds oblong, ± 5 mm, reticulate.
Distribution
KENYA Embu District Kiang’ombe Hill, 8 July 2005, Ngugi, Mwachala & Kirika 279! & Mwachala & Ngugi 616! & 6 June 2003, Ngugi & Kirika 40!
Notes
CONSERVATION So far only known from two populations both present in an ungazetted forested area, close to saw pits and encroaching development; here assessed as Critically Endangered (CR B1a) with extent of occurrence estimated to be less than 100 km2 and so far known to exist at only a single location.. The two populations known so far from the above locality are about 100 m apart – one underneath Phoenix reclinata (Mwachala & Ngugi 616) and the other (Ngugi, Mwachala & Kirika 279) under Croton sylvaticus .