Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs; stems leafy throughout, narrowly ridged by decurrent leaf bases, pubescent, hairs retrorse and minutely glandular
• Leaves opposite below, alternate above, narrowly elliptic to linear-oblong, entire or toothed, thick, glandular-punctate
• Flowers in terminal, capitate inflorescences, solitary or with few to several smaller heads on short, leafy, axillary shoots below main one, globose or oblong-cylindrical, erect, scarcely elongating in fruit
• Bracts roughly as long as broad, concave, clearly distinct from leaves, adnate to minute pedicel, free from calyx
• Calyx unequally 5-lobed, thin-textured
• Corolla tubular, bilabiate, 5-lobed, longer than calyx; tube funnel-shaped, glabrous or very minutely glandular outside; posterior lip 2-lobed, exterior in bud, base with orange patch and clavate hairs; anterior lip 3-lobed; lobes spreading, oblong-elliptic, entire
• Stamens either 4 and didynamous, or 2 or 3 by reduction of anterior pair, arising near top of corolla tube, exserted; posterior filaments decurrent to base of tube; anthers synthecate, dorsifixed; staminodes 0
• Nectary at base of ovary on posterior side
• Ovary bilocular, ± oblong-elliptic; ovules up to 6 per locule on upper part of placenta, few developing; style minutely glandular-puberulous; stigma lingulate, flattened, with 2 marginal bands of stigmatic papillae, nearly as long as style, exserted
• Fruit a septicidal capsule with a short loculicidal split at tip of each valve, minutely glandular on sutures
• Seeds 1-4 per locule, each seated on a massive, pulvinate funicle, elliptical, convex on outer face, flat on inner, sinuously wrinkled, pallid, eventually blackish brown

Classification Notes:

• Close to Glumicalyx Hiern

Nomenclature:

• Strobilopsis Hilliard & B.L.Burtt
  • Hilliard & Burtt: 172 (1977)
  • Hilliard & Burtt: 206 (1989)
  • Hilliard: 532 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Monotypic: Strobilopsis wrightii Hilliard & B.L.Burtt, Drakensberg (KwaZulu-Natal) and Sehlabathebe (Lesotho); mainly from Cave Sandstone outcrops, altitude above ± 2 000 m