Thespesia Sol. ex Correa, Ann.Mus.Hist.Nat.Paris. 9:290. t.8.f.1. 1807. nom. gen. conserv. Mast. in Hook. f.,Fl.Brit.Ind.1:345,1874; Hu,Fl.China, fam. 153.68.1955; Borss. in Blumea 14(1): 105.1966; Hutch.,Gen.Fl.Pl.2:548.1967; Fosberg & Sachet, Smith. Contr. Bot. No. 7.7.1972; S. Abedin in Pak. J Bot. 9 (1): 60. 1977.
Shrubs or small trees, sometimes with a yellow sticky sap, simple, peltate or stellate hairy or sometimes glabrous. Leaves long petioled, stipules caducous, blade entire or 3-5 lobed. Flowers axillary, solitary or in terminal racemes, large, showy; epicalyx segments 2-8, free, linear-ovate, caducous or persistent. Calyx cupuliform, truncate, 5 toothed, leathery, persistent. Corolla yellow with a crimson centre. Staminal tube 5-lobed or dentate at the apex, most of the part antheriferous. Carpels 4-5; ovary 4-5 loculed, each locule few-many ovuled; style unbranched, ± clavate; stigma elongate. Fruit almost indehiscent woody capsule. Seeds few to many, glabrous or hairy, angular or obovoid, cotyledons black punctate.
A genus with about 15 species distributed in the tropics of both hemispheres. In Pakistan it is represented by 2 species.
