Karomia Dop

Shrubs or trees, glabrous or pubescent, unarmed or with small axillary spines; stems sometimes ± subscandent. Leaves deciduous, petiolate, entire or toothed. Inflorescences cymose, axillary or crowded at apices of shoots and appearing terminal; bracts mostly small, deciduous. Calyx often brightly coloured; tube very short, urceolate; limb broadly expanded, very accrescent to form an entire or 5-lobed usually venose rotate plate-like structure in fruit. Corolla-tube gibbous, very asymmetric, contracted beneath the limb, split dorsally almost to the base; limb 5-lobed and ± 1-lipped, very irregularly formed of 2 separated posterior lobes, 2 lateral lobes and a larger median anterior labelliform cucullate lobe. Stamens inserted near throat, the filaments enrolled into a ring in bud, distinctly exserted at anthesis and curved; filaments not prolonged beneath the point of insertion. Style enrolled in a ring with the filaments in bud. Fruit dry and hard, turbinate or turbinate-obpyramidal, rounded above or ± flat and with 4 small horns in a cross, at length dividing into ?2–4 pyrenes. Fig. 11. Apart from one species occasionally cultivated in East Africa a recently described but imperfectly known endemic species may belong to this genus. R. Fernandes has given good reasons for recognising Karomia; she places the Madagascan and Vietnam species in sect. Karomia and the African species in sect. Cyclonemoides R. Fernandes. K. gigas had not then been described although she was aware of its existence and thought it unlikely to be a Holmskioldia.