Plants usually twining, sometimes erect or decumbent, glabrous or with uniseriate, multicellular hairs; latex milky, white to yellow. Leaves present or absent. Inflorescences usually helicoid cymes with paired branches, occasionally with 1 or 2 of the basal braches having secondary branches. Flowers 5-merous, usually less than 5 mm wide, never more than 15 mm wide; corollas glabrous or sparsely hairy on the inner service; coronas present, gynostegial in origin, staminal and interstaminal portions fused for at least 1/4th their length; anther wings consisting of inner and outer ridges separateed by a bistle-filled cavity; pollinaria consisting of 2 penduluous pollinia and a well-developed translator; stylar heads with conspicuous protrusions at upper end of the corpuscula, dividing the heads in a rather uniform lower and bariable upper part. Fruits follicles, usually one 1 developing, the other aborted, obovate, winged or wingless. pericap usually thing and smooth; seeds brown, elliptic to pyriform in outline, winged or wingless ssmooth, sculptured, or hairy, tops crowned with a tuft of white hairs

Cynanchum, as now interpreted, includes more than 250 species. It used to be interpreted more narrowly, but most of the segregate genera were discovered bo be nested in Cynanchum.

Key to the species of Cynanchum in Somaliland and Somalia. 

S. Liede & M.G. Gilbert (2006) Cynanchum Glossonema, Odontothera, Pentarrhinum.

Plants usually twining, sometimes scrambling, sometimes dwarf perennial herbs or shrublets, glabrous or with white hairs; latex milky, white to yellow, 

Global distribution of Cynanchum.

Note: GBIF records include introduced and cultivated plants. Consequently, the distribution shown often differs from statements about a taxon's native distribution.

Liede, S. (1996)  A revision of Cynanchum (Asclepiadacae) in Africa. Annls of the Missouri Botanical Garden 83(3): 283-345.

Khanum, R., S. Surveswaran, U. Meve, & S. Liede-Schumann (2016) Cynanchum (Apocynaceae: Asclepiadoideae): A pantropical Asclepiadoid genus revisited. Taxon 65(3); 467-486.