Description :

• Robust herbs or undershrubs with tufted habit, monoecious or flowers bisexual
• Leaves radical or mainly on basal growth, sessile or petiolate, simple, often large and leathery, tomentose or woolly, at least on lower surface
• Flowers in pedunculate, bracteate, compound, capitate umbels; each umbel with a single, female or bisexual flower surrounded by a number of male flowers, rarely all flowers bisexual
• Calyx with ovate or lanceolate, persistent lobes
• Petals somewhat filiform, inflexed at apex
• Disc flattened
• Styles terete, longer than calyx lobes
• Fruit ovate, dorsally flattened or oblong; mericarps orbicular or oblong, flat or convex on back and face, usually deeply channelled on each margin, with 5 or 6 veins and many oil ducts in furrows; dorsal vein often forming a narrow keel
• Seeds flattened, usually broadly elliptic
• x = 7 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Hermas L.
  • Linnaeus: 163 (1771)
  • Sonder: 565 (1862)
  • Burtt: 211 (1991)
  • Pimenov & Leonov: 60 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 7, Western and Eastern Cape, from Caledon to Uitenhage District