Description :

• Herbs, subshrubs or shrubs, perennial or annual to biennial, prostrate, decumbent or erect; stems (young) articulate, succulent and green, old ones becoming woody; bladder cells inconspicuous, hair-like, dome-shaped or much flattened
• Leaves decussate and becoming alternate in inflorescence, free or shortly fused at base, semiterete or terete, dry and persistent or deciduous, sometimes with mucro
• Flowers terminal or lateral, in cymes or solitary, less than 20 mm in diameter
• Sepals 4 or 5, fused into a short tube
• Petals free or shortly fused towards base, white, pink, puce or rarely pale yellow to greenish
• Staminodes gathered around stamens, thus forming a cone
• Nectary consisting of 4 or 5 narrow grooves or absent
• Ovary with axile placentas
• Fruit a 4- or 5-locular capsule, of Mesembryanthemum type, expanding keels extending to centre of fruit; valve wings inflexed over valves
• Seeds D-shaped or obtusely triangular in outline, 0.5-1.2 mm long, rough or almost smooth, ochre or brown
• x = 9 (1 report, polyploidy)

• Flowering from early- to mid-summer

• Distinguishing characters :
  • Stems succulent, smooth or with minute bladder cell idioblasts
  • Flowers with broad filamentous staminodes which are ragged at tips, transparent and gathered into a cone

Nomenclature:

• Psilocaulon N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 433 (1925)
  • Herre: 260 (1971)
  • Ihlenfeldt & Bittrich: 289 (1985)
  • Klak & Linder: 301 (1998)
  • Smith et al.: 28 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 13, widespread in southern, central and western South Africa, W Namibia and occurs in both summer- and winter-rainfall regions
  • Also S Angola