Description :

• Low, glabrous perennials with many short shoots forming compact clumps with several long shoots which may be trailing
• Leaves opposite, leaf pairs dimorphic: leaf pairs on short shoots and first leaf pair on long shoots fused into long sheaths with only short free tips, less connate leaf pairs with pointed free leaf portions on long shoots; without tannin idioblasts (a rare condition in Ruschioideae), stomata not sunken
• Flowers solitary, pedicellate or sessile, bracteate, up to ± 60 mm in diameter
• Sepals 5
• Petals 2-seriate, white
• Stamens with 2 or 3 series of papillate, pink or purple staminodes; surrounding stamens in a cone, distinctly elongating during anthesis
• Nectary a crenulate ring
• Ovary flattish on top; placentas parietal; stigmas 10, subulate
• Fruit a 10-locular capsule of Leipoldtia type, with additional closing devices such as inconspicuous ledges or bulges; expanding keels diverging, with wings; covering membranes present; closing bodies present, large, white
• Seeds smooth
• x = 9 (polyploidy)

• Flowering winter to early spring

• Distinguishing characters :
  • compact perennial clumps with trailing or climbing long shoots
  • leaf pairs dimorphic
  • flowers with distinctly elongating filamentous staminodes

Nomenclature:

• Vanzijlia L.Bolus
  • Bolus: t. 262 (1927)
  • Herre: 306 (1971)
  • Hartmann: 85 (1982)
  • Hartmann: 499 (1983)
  • Smith et al.: 378 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 1: Vanzijlia annulata (A.Berger) L.Bolus, western coast of the Northern and Western Cape, with an extension inland into the Knersvlakte