Description :

• Shrubs or shrublets, erect or occasionally procumbent to ascending; young branches often 4-angled
• Leaves sessile or sometimes shortly petiolate, entire, opposite, linear to ovate or oblanceolate, often reduced in size towards tips of branches, glabrous
• Flowers usually in spike-like racemes; bracts foliaceous; bracteoles variable
• Perianth united, at least in basal half, into a campanulate or cylindric tube, with 4(5) triangular lobes, simply valvate, often with thickened apex and keeled inner face, persistent and enclosing capsule, accrescent, white to pale yellow or sometimes pink, often becoming purplish with age
• Stamens : filaments fused for greater part to inner wall of perianth tube, with very short free portion, extending into an expanded cordate-ovate, fleshy connective, on inner basal portion of which are produced 2 thecae with introrse dehiscence
• Ovary 4-locular, with 2 ascending ovules from near base of inner surface of each locule; style columnar, with 4-8 longitudinal ridges and 4 rather flat, stigmatic lobes at apex
• Capsule hard, quadrangular-ovoidal with loculicidal dehiscence

Nomenclature:

• Stylapterus A.Juss.
  • Jussieu: 15 (1846)
  • Dahlgren: 3 (1967)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 8, SW Western Cape