Commemorating Father B. Cobo (1572–1659), Jesuit priest, naturalist and traveller in Mexico and Peru.
Perennial herbs or woody climbers. Leaves alternate, pinnate with a terminal tendril. Flowers solitary in the leaf axils, green to purple, fragrant when mature. Calyx leafy, 5-lobed and bent back. Corolla cuplike. Stamens 5, protruding. Fruit a fleshy capsule containing flat, winged seeds.
The unusual perennial climbing plant, C. scandens, is often grown as an annual; it is placed by some authors in the family Cobaeaceae.
Seed.
The cultivated plant a tendril climber with large, open, cup-and-saucer-shaped flowers.
10 species from tropical America.
Herklots (1986).
Source: (2002). Polemoniaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 4. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 3. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.