Sesamothamnus Welw.

Branched spiny shrubs or small trees; trunks smooth, usually swollen at the base; leafless when flowering; branches ascending, spiny. Leaves deciduous, usually obovate, fasciculate on short branches in the axils of the spines (modified petioles). Flowers large, white, pink or yellow, often sweet-scented in the evening and early morning, in few-flowered racemes. Calyx usually glandular, subequally lobed, posterior lobe smaller, often deflexed. Corolla-tube long, cylindrical or narrowly funnel-shaped, straight or curved, slightly widened at the throat, spurred or gibbous at the base; spur slender, variable in length; limb spreading at right angles to the tube, glabrous to subtomentose on the upper surface, subequally lobed; lobes entire or fringed. Stamens subequal; filaments adnate to the corolla-tube below, free upper-part short or very short; anthers large, oblong to subovate, parallel, dorsifixed; connective often apiculate; pollen in tetrads. Ovary 2-celled, divided by false septa into 4 compartments; disc swollen, asymmetric, sometimes inconspicuously so; ovules numerous. Capsule woody, oblong to obovate, compressed. Seeds numerous, compressed, winged, suborbicular to transversely oblong.