Description :

• Subshrubs, glaucous
• Stems much branched with branches terete
• Leaves opposite or alternate, pinnate; rachis tapering, simulating branches; leaflets subopposite, petiolate, small, few, obovate, entire, often soon deciduous
• Flowers usually solitary in forks of branches
• Calyx somewhat leathery; sepals 5, free, unequal, variously white-woolly in upper part of ventral surface, margins membranous
• Petals 5, sessile, obovate, yellow
• Hypogynous scales coronate, with 5 toothed lobes, yellowish orange
• Stamens 10; filaments tapering; anthers linear, versatile, almost as long as filaments
• Ovary sessile, 5-angled, 5-locular, villous with long cream-coloured hairs; with a solitary, pendulous ovule in each locule; style simple, stout, terete; stigma simple
• Fruit a capsule, somewhat crustaceous, 5-lobed, transversely furrowed, with cream-coloured hairs, splitting into 5 obliquely ovate mericarps
• Seeds compressed; endosperm absent
• x = 10 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Sisyndite E.Mey. ex Sond.
  • Sonder: 354 (1860)
  • Hooker: 265 (1862)
  • Engler: 88 (1931)
  • Phillips: 435 (1951)
  • Killick: t. 1537 (1968)
  • Schreiber: 4 (1966)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Monotypic: Sisyndite spartea E.Mey. ex Sond., in the southern part of Namibia, and in Northern Cape and the northwestern parts of Western Cape