S.I. ALI

Twining or climbing, often epiphytic subshrubs or shrubs. Branches rooting at nodes, glabrous. Leaves opposite, thick and fleshy. Flowers in sessile clusters or in pedunculate umbelloid cymes. Calyx small, 5 lobed. Corolla rotate, lobes valvate. Corona single consisting of 5 large, fleshy horizontally spreading segments attached to the staminal column, produced at the inner angle into a tooth projecting inwards. Gynostegium short, sessile. Anthers with the connective produced into a membranous tip. Pollinia erect from dark honry corpuscula, 1 per locule, waxy, without pellucid margin. Follicles slender or thickened, fusiform, oblong to linear. Seeds comose.

A genus with c. 200 species, distributed in S. China, Nepal, S.E. Asia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Northern Australia and Pacific Islands; represented in Pakistan by 1 species.

Lower Taxon

• Hoya longifolia Wall.