Lianas, the branchlets terete, without interpetiolar glandular fields; pseudostipules inconspicuous or lacking. Leaves simple or 2-foliolate, often with a simple tendril, ± lepidote but otherwise glabrous. Inflorescence a few-branched bifurcating panicle, sometimes reduced to a single flower. Calyx spathaceously split to below the middle, thin, the narrowing tip recurved and forming a glandular hoodlike structure with sparse lepidote scales; corolla magenta, tubular-funnel-shaped, lepidote outside. Anthers glabrous, the thecae straight, divaricate. Ovary rounded-conical to narrowly cylindric, lepidote; ovules 2-seriate in each locule; disk absent. Fruit a capsule, the valves parallel to the septum, the surface densely lepidote, smooth but microscopically crystalline-rough, the median vein indistinct; the capsule compressed and linear-oblong with thin brown-winged, 2-winged seeds or short, ovoid, and slightly compressed with thick, corky wingless seeds.
Costa Rica to Brazil and Bolivia; 3 species, 1 in Venezuela.
Phryganocydia corymbosa (Vent.) Baill., Hist. Pl. 10: 34-35. 1891. -Spathodea corymbosa Vent., Mém. Math. Phys. Inst. Nat. France 1: 19. 1807. -Barqui.
Spathodea orinocensis H.B.K., Nov. Gen. Sp. (quarto ed.) 3: 147. 1818 [1819].
Liana. Semideciduous to evergreen lowland or lower montane forests, 100-900 m; widespread in Delta Amacuro, Bolívar, and Amazonas. Widespread elsewhere in Venezuela; Costa Rica to Brazil and Bolivia. Fig. 400.
Phryganocydia corymbosa is unmistakable in the spathaceous calyx and in being very conspicuous when in flower because of its "big bang" floral phenology. In the flora area, it is the most commonly collected species of Bignoniaceae.