Description :

• Prostrate to decumbent, purple or salmon-red annual herbs; stems herbaceous, branching from base
• Leaves decussate, sessile, flat, roundish or oval, united at base, forming a scutelliform, amplexicaul dish, upper ones much smaller and free; epidermis smooth or with small bladder cells at margins
• Flowers in dichasia, up to 15 mm in diameter
• Sepals 4, unequal, 2 foliaceous, fused into a short tube
• Petals free at base, white
• Staminodes 0
• Nectary consisting of 4 separate narrow grooves
• Ovary with axile placentas; stigmas 4, subulate
• Fruit a 4-locular capsule, of Mesembryanthemum type; expanding keels extend to centre of fruit; covering membranes 0; valves with large, erect, incurved wings
• Seeds up to 0.6 mm long, whitish, surface smooth, crest absent

• Flowering in mid-summer

• Distinguishing characters :
  • Paired leaves flat, roundish, stem-clasping
  • Size and shape differences between basal and upper leaves

Nomenclature:

• Synaptophyllum N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 412 (1925)
  • Friedrich: 129 (1970)
  • Herre: 298 (1971)
  • Bittrich: 5 (1986)
  • Smith et al.: 54 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 1: Synaptophyllum juttae (Dinter & A.Berger) N.E.Br., restricted to the fog zone of the southern Namib Desert, near Lüderitz in SW Namibia