Agelanthus __NOTOC__ ''Agelanthus'' is a genus of Afrotropics, Afrotropical plants in the family Loranthaceae. They grow in trees, including Acacia and Combretum species, as hemiparasitic shrubs of varying sizes. The host plant is penetrated by a single ha ...

microphyllus'' is a species of

hemiparasitic A parasitic plant is a plant that derives some or all of its nutritional requirements from another living plant. They make up about 1% of angiosperms and are found in almost every biome. All parasitic plants develop a specialized organ called the ...

plant Plants are the eukaryotes that form the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with c ...

in the family

Loranthaceae Loranthaceae, commonly known as the showy mistletoes, is a family of flowering plants. It consists of about 75 genera and 1,000 species of woody plants, many of them hemiparasites. The three terrestrial species are '' Nuytsia floribunda'' (the ...

, which is native to

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

and

Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...

Description

A description of the plant is given in Govaerts ''et al.'', based on Polhill & Wiens (1999).

Habitat/ecology

''A. microphyllus'' grows on

Acacia ''Acacia'', commonly known as wattles or acacias, is a genus of about of shrubs and trees in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. Initially, it comprised a group of plant species native to Africa, South America, and Austral ...

species in deciduous bushland, and is an extremely scattered and uncommon species.

Threats

The main threat is habitat conversion to agriculture, in particular, to maize plantations.

References

Flora of Tanzania Flora of Kenya Flora of Ethiopia microphyllus {{Santalales-stub