4419.000 Tragiella Pax & K. Hoffm.

Monoecious erect or twining perennial herbs with a simple indumentum, mixed with urticating bristles. Leaves alternate, petiolate or subsessile, stipulate, simple or palmately-lobed, serrate, palminerved. Inflorescences leaf-opposed or terminal on short axillary shoots, racemose, usually mostly male with 1–2 female flowers at the base.Bracts conspicuous, persistent, 1-flowered.Flowers shortly pedicellate. Male flowers calyx closed in bud, later splitting into 3 valvate lobes, with or without a basal tube constricted below the limb; petals absent. Female flowers calyx lobes 6, imbricate, pinnatifid, usually with a narrow central rhachis, accrescent; petals absent; ovary 3-celled, with 1 ovule per cell. Fruit 3-lobed, dehiscing into 3 bivalved cocci; pericarp thin, crustaceous; endocarp thick, woody. Seeds globose, mottled; cotyledons broad, flat.

Worldwide: Five species, occurring from Sudan south to the Cape Province.

Zambia: 2 taxa.