Description :

• Succulent, sometimes spiky subshrubs or shrubs, branching at or above base to form clumps
• Stems 4(5 or 6)-angled, not stoloniferous, glabrous, leafless, grey to purplish, with angles rounded, bearing stout, convex tubercles each armed with a hardened, conical, horizontal to decurved, yellow-brown tooth, each tooth sometimes flanked by two denticles, tubercles from adjacent angles meeting in middle of stem with well-defined groove
• Inflorescences 1-20 per stem, glabrous, mainly in upper part of stem
• Flowers solitary or produced in fascicles arising from peduncular patches in groove in middle of stem formed by tubercles
• Corolla variously expanding, depending on number of flowers in fascicle, frequently papillate and spiculate, rarely hairy within, 7-25 mm diam., mostly much smaller than diameter of stems; tube rarely absent, bowl-shaped to conical, up to 5 mm deep; lobes ovate-lanceolate to linear-acute, margins sometimes ciliate, sometimes conspicuously folded back, 3-15 mm long
• Corona : outer lobes deeply bifid, to shallowly bifid or entire and entirely enclosing space between inner lobes to form cup around column, arising near base of inner lobes; inner lobes adpressed to backs of anthers for most of length of anthers, occasionally initially incumbent and then rising up in centre in a small column, mostly dorsally flattened
• Anthers 2-locular, horizontal on top of style head, rectangular
• Pollinia ellipsoidal, with pellucid margin along outer edge
• Follicles terete-fusiform, erect, diverging at up to 90°
• Seeds flattened, brown, finely papillate on surface, with tuft of hairs
• x = 11

Nomenclature:

• Quaqua N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 8 (1879)
  • Bruyns: 35 (1983)
  • Gilbert: 1 (1990)
  • Plowes: 83 (1993)
  • Bruyns: 311 (1999)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 19, Namibia, North-West, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape