山梗菜组 shan geng cai zu

Rhynchopetalum Fresenius, Flora 21: 603. 1838.

Plants perennial or pliestesial, shrubs, treelets, or trees, 0.5-9 m tall. Stems robust, typically pachycaul, herbaceous, subshrubby, or woody, prostrate, decumbent, ascending, or erect, simple, often apically rosulate. Leaves sessile (very rarely petiolate). Flowers in a terminal raceme or panicle. Corolla sub-bilabiate or unilabiate, various shades of blue, purple, red, yellow, green, or white, (12-) 22-50 mm; tube curved or arcuate; lobes spreading or deflexed, as long as tube or longer. Anthers bearded with tufts of filiform hairs at apex of ventral pair or all anthers nude at apex. Fruit a capsule. Seeds ovoid, lenticular, commonly winged; testa striate-reticulate.

Sixty-one species: tropical Africa, SE Asia, South America (SE Brazil); 13 species (four endemic) in China.