Description :

• Dwarf, glabrous, succulent perennials forming compact to diffuse clumps, branching from base, often rhizomatous
• Stems erect to prostrate, obtusely 4-angled, prominently acutely toothed along angles; teeth conical or compressed-deltoid, spreading, usually widely so, each tipped with a soft, acute to acuminate leaf rudiment, usually subtended by a pair of stipular denticles shortly below apex
• Inflorescences 1-3(-5) per stem, developed normally from near base of stem, each with 1-40 flowers usually developing in succession
• Flowers often humifuse, ± 10-100 mm in diameter, not or only faintly odorous
• Corolla rotate to campanulate, often thickened below bases of lobes to form a prominent annulus; outside smooth, often streaked with purple; inside rugulose to ± smooth; lobes spreading to reflexed, ± flat above, often with vibratile clavate cilia on margins
• Corona 2-seriate, glabrous, mostly with 10 lobes in 2 alternating series, on a mostly short stipe, generally accessible to relatively large pollinators; outer corona usually of 5 spreading to erect, ± subquadrate lobes beneath anther wings, protruding above relatively large nectarial cavity with nectarial orifice at its rear and corresponding outer corona lobe spreading from its base; inner lobes adpressed to backs of anthers, often exceeding them and rising up connivent in centre, dorsiventrally flattened to terete, often with fin-like dorsal appendage
• Anthers 2-locular, horizontal on top of style head
• Pollinia ± broadly ovate or subcircular, with a ± straight inner margin, as long as or slightly longer than broad
• Follicles erect, terete-fusiform, glabrous, smooth
• x = 11 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Orbea Haw.
  • Haworth: 37 (1812)
  • Leach: 4 (1985)
• Diplocyatha N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 167 (1878)
  • Brown: 923 (1909)
  • White & Sloane: 722 (1937).
• Stultitia Phillips
  • Phillips: t. 520 (1933)
  • Phillips: 613 (1951)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 20
• Southern Africa : Species 18, in all countries and provinces, except Lesotho