Notes

This taxon is closely related to the pubescent V. proschii and could equally well be considered a variety of it. Although the two taxa are more or less sympatric, V. proschii has a wider distribution. In the first specimen cited above there are a few scattered hairs on the venation beneath and a very few hairs on some corollas, but other “Barotseland” and Angolan material has glabrous leaves and corollas, like the type of V. cyanescens. F. White 2012, a scrappy sterile specimen from Senenga in Zambia, with large leaves c. 20 ? 10 cm is perhaps an odd growth form of the species. Some specimens from the Ndola area in Zambia W: [fl. bud, 12.xii.1953, Fanshawe 576 (K; NDO); fl. bud 14.xii.1953, Fanshawe 596 (K; NDO); and fr. 7.iii.1954, Fanshawe 951 (K; NDO)] seem intermediate between V. cyanescens and V. madagascariensis. They have the powdery bark and densely tufted stipules of V. cyanescens but the inflorescence is more like that of V. madagascariensis. This material differs from V. apiculata as the stems are not shiny and conspicuously lenticellate, and both the petioles and calyx lobes are longer. The name V. cyanescens has frequently been applied to specimens from South Africa (Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal) and Swaziland, and has consequently been confused in literature with V. madagascariensis and/or V. randii subsp. chartacea (e.g. Pooley, Trees of Natal, Zululand & Transkei: 470, fig. (1993)).