Description :

• Glabrous shrubs up to 400 mm high
• Leaves opposite, united for ± half their length into a sheath with longitudinal lines, apical portion spreading, acute or mucronate, triangular in cross section, with margins and keel somewhat horny, often serrate; stomatal apparatus sunken, hidden under a dome of connate peristomatal papillae
• Flowers solitary or in cymes, pedicellate, ± 20 mm in diameter; bracts enclosing lower part of flower
• Sepals 5, subequal
• Petals often in 5 groups, filiform-linear, white
• Stamens incurved, concealed by longer and many more white staminodes in 3 or 4 series
• Nectary a crenulate ring
• Ovary with placentas parietal; stigmas (8-) 10(-18), subulate
• Fruit a (8-)10(-18)-locular capsule, with top elevated and white, and base ± funnel-shaped; close to Ruschia type, but with valve wings and rather shallow locules; expanding keels abruptly diverging towards apex, with broad, terminal wings; covering membranes straight, without a rim at top; closing bodies large and white ( P. albiflora ) or smaller and dark ( P. steenbokensis )
• Seeds smooth

• Flowering in summer

• Distinguishing characters :
  • Shrubby perennials with leaves fused at their bases, stem-sheathing, diverging at tips
  • Flowers white
  • Fruit 10-18-locular

Nomenclature:

• Polymita N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 72 (1930)
  • Herre: 254 (1971)
  • Hartmann: 29 (1996)
  • Smith et al.: 352 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 2, northern Namaqualand in the Northern Cape