Description :

• Rigid, fleshy, perennial shrublets; branches covered with hard, waxy, translucent bark with or without persistent, spiny petioles
• Leaves dimorphic: long- and short-petiolate; long-petiolate ones occurring singly, remaining as blunt or sharp spines; short-petiolate ones occurring singly or in tufts in axils of spines; lamina generally conduplicate, green or glaucous, cuneate, obcordate, elliptic, obovate or orbicular, toothed, lobed or segmented, deciduous; stipules semipersistent or caducous
• Flowers regular, hypogynous, pedunculate, solitary, axillary; bracts 2, opposite
• Sepals 5, free, imbricate, oblong-elliptic, margins membranous, mucronate or mucronulate
• Petals 5, free, slightly ruffled, sessile, obovate or subtruncate at apex, apical margin undulate to erose, glabrous, sparsely pilose or ciliate; base clawed, hairy
• Stamens 15, all perfect, monadelphous in 5 groups of 1 long and 2 short filaments each, fused at base; filaments sericeous towards base, tapering towards apex; anthers linear, extrorse, centrifixed
• Ovary 5-carpellate, narrowly obovate, sericeous, with 2 ovules per locule; style glabrous or tomentose; stigmas 5
• Mericarps 5, 1-seeded, base oblanceolate, sharp-pointed; awns thin, villous
• Seeds exalbuminous
• x = 11 (polyploidy)

Classification Notes:

• Albers (1996) places Sarcocaulon under Monsonia ; but see Dreyer et al. (1997) and Moffett (1997)

Nomenclature:

• Sarcocaulon (DC.) Sweet
  • Sweet: 73 (1826)
  • Harvey: 256 (1860)
  • Knuth: 311 (1912)
  • Rehm: 264 (1935)
  • Moffett: 581 (1979)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 14, Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 14, widespread but concentrated in Namibia and Northern Cape