Description :

• Shrubs with long, slender, trailing, arched branches or short-stemmed dwarf shrubs, 30-600 mm high; roots woody or tuberous and clusters of tubers may be present
• Leaves opposite, slightly connate at base, ± cylindric, up to 30 mm long, usually tipped with a tuft of spreading, bristle-like hairs forming a diadem, surfaces glistening, papillate, bladder cells elevated and pointed at one or both ends
• Flowers solitary, with short pedicels, up to ± 50 mm in diameter, without bracts
• Sepals 5-8, papillate, and often with tuft of bristles at tips
• Petals 1-several-seriate, white, cream, yellow, light to dark pink
• Stamens and staminodes sometimes hairy near base, in a central cone
• Nectary of 5-8 separate, crenate glands
• Ovary flat or convex; placentas parietal; stigmas 5-8, lanceolate, much shorter than stamens
• Fruit a 5-8-locular capsule, of Drosanthemum type; expanding keels contiguous, winged, diverging towards tips; valve wings broad and rounded; covering membranes present or reduced to a limb; closing bodies 0
• Seeds pear-shaped, minutely warty and grooved, brown or yellowish

• Flowering winter to early summer

• Distinguishing characters :
  • Short- or long-stemmed shrubs
  • Leaves crowned with a diadem of bristles
  • Fruit with well-developed covering membranes

Nomenclature:

• Trichodiadema Schwantes
  • Schwantes: 187 (1926)
  • Friedrich: 133 (1970)
  • Herre: 302 (1971)
  • Ihlenfeldt: 145 (1980)
  • Niesler: 13 (1997)
  • Smith et al.: 310 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 34, widespread in the more arid areas in S Namibia, the Richtersveld, Bushmanland and the Great and Little Karoos, in South Africa covering extensive areas in the Northern, Western and Eastern Cape as well as the W Free State