J. Lavranous (2006) Sanguilluma Flora of Somali 3: 178-179
Plants succulent herbs from a single primary stem, intricately branched, forming clumps up to 30 cm tall and wide; stems pale green to bluish green with brownish or blackish-green tubercles; latex clear, clear with strong, peculiar smell. Leaves minute, quickly falling. Inflorescences of solitary or paired axillary flowers, located near branch tips. Pedicels about 0.5 mm long; corollas about 20 mm wide, tubes yellows with red of brownish dots, limbs bright reid or brownish red with concencentric, darker ridges, lobes broadly triangular, with marked sinues between them uniformly dark red; coronas 3.5-4 mm tall, dark purple-red, the outer lobes so deeply divided that they look like the basal appendages of of inner lobes.
Ceropegia socotrana grows in deciduous bushland and semi-desert open scrub. It it known Ethiopia, Somaliland, Somalia, and Kenya. The Flora of Somalia reports that it grows in regions N1-N3, C1-2, and S1-2.
Ceropegia socotrana is treated as Sanguilluma socotrana in the Flora of Somalia.It has aslo been treated as Caralluma socotrana. Its inclusion in an expanded Ceropegia is supported by molecular and morphological data. A key to the sections of the expanded Ceropegia s in development.