Edithcolea

Morphological Summary

Monotypic or ditypic genus of stapelioid succulents in the Apocynaceae family, subfamily Asclepiadoideae, tribe Stapelieae, belonging to the informal "huernioid" group. Described by N. E. Brown in 1895 in honor of Edith Cole, an English naturalist and collector who gathered specimens in Somalia in the late 19th century. Plants are succulent stem succulents with pentagonal to hexagonal angled stems bearing toothed tubercles along the angles, without true leaves. Distributed across the arid deserts and thorn scrublands of the Horn of Africa (Somalia, northern Kenya, eastern Ethiopia, southern Yemen and southern Arabia) at elevations of 0 to 1,500 m. The genus is best known for Edithcolea grandis, one of the largest and most spectacular flowers in the entire Apocynaceae family, with corollas up to 15 cm in diameter densely mottled red-brown on a yellow-cream background.