6878.000 Hoodia Sweet ex Decne.

Spiny, non-rhizomatous succulent shrub with 3-many stems; up to 2 m tall and 2 m broad; stems long, erect, cylindric, fleshy, hard, grey-green to brown; tubercles deltoid, laterally flattened, joined into acute rows along the stem, each tipped with a sharp spine. Inflorescence usually arising towards the apex of the stem, glabrous, bearing 1-2 flowers opening successively; pedicels long, usually spreading; corolla rotate to campanulate, small and deeply lobed to large and flat to shallowly cupular, outside smooth, inside smooth to bristly. Fruit a follicle, erect, consisting of two horns, glabrous.

Comment: More recent phylogenetic evidence has led to the forming of a very broad concept of the genus Ceropegia including the genus Brachystelma and all known genera within the Stapeliae (Bruyns, P.V., Klak, C. & Hanáček, P., 2017). However we follow Goyder et Al. in Flora Zambesiaca 7(2), 2020 where the inclusion of the Stapeliad genera has not been accepted.
Records of two other species of Hoodia by Setshogo (2005) in the Preliminary Checklist of the Plants of Botswana appear to be erroneous – H. gordonii is native to Namibia and South Africa, while H. parviflora is restricted to Angola and Namibia. (Goyder et Al. (2020) in Flora Zambesiaca 7(2): 190.

Worldwide: 13 species in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana.

Botswana: 1 taxon.