Description :

• Shrubs or small trees
• Leaves mostly in fascicles on abbreviated short shoots, simple, entire; indumentum of simple hairs
• Flowers bisexual, solitary, axillary
• Calyx 4-lobed to near base
• Petals 4, imbricate
• Stamens 8; filaments curved, fused only near base, without appendages; anthers medifixed
• Disc thin, partly fused to base of staminal tube
• Ovary 4-lobed, with 4 locules, each with 2 collateral ovules; style exserted with a simple, minute, scarcely expanded style head
• Fruit a papery, inflated capsule with laterally compressed, wing-like locules, at first suffused with carmine
• Seeds reniform, minutely verrucose, puberulent
• x = 8 (aneuploids - 1 report, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Nymania Lindb.
  • Lindberg: 290 (1868)
  • Verdoorn: t. 1454 (1965)
  • Friedrich-Holzhammer: 2 (1968)
  • White: 146 (1986)
  • White & Styles: 39 (1986)
  • Dahlgren & Van Wyk: 56 (1988) as Aitoniaceae
• Aitonia Thunb.
  • Thunberg: 166 (1781) name illegitimate, not Aytonia Forst. & Forst.f.: 243 (1776)
  • Harvey: 243 (1860)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 1: Nymania capensis (Thunb.) Lindb., southern half of Namibia, Northern Cape (Namaqualand and north-central parts), S Western Cape and southern half of Eastern Cape