Description :

• Shrubs erect to sprawling or dwarf, rarely with coppice shoots sprouting from a lignotuber
• Leaves narrowly ovate to linear, abaxially deeply and prominently keeled; with a slender petiole; dark stipules present, later lost; bud leaf colleter slender to conical, later shrinking or lost
• Flowers in dense capitula; bracts forming a radiating involucre, linear to ovate, the outer leaf-like, green, the inner often cream-white; bracteoles filiform; floral receptacle slightly to closely ribbed
• Calyx with a tube; segments narrowly deltoid, up to half darkened from apex
• Corolla white to deep mauve-pink; petals free, elliptic to sometimes oblong, entire to undulate or toothed, fitting tightly together and crested to form a cup covering edge of ovary
• Stamens free from corolla, usually with a swelling near base matching petal crests, erect to incurving; anther thecae adnate; pollen grains with 4 or 5 colpi
• Nectary 0; scent mostly not recorded, in one species faintly sweet
• Ovary inferior to almost so; locules 1 or 2, if 2 then wall between locules sometimes incomplete; ovules 1 or 2 per locule or rarely an ovule lacking in one locule; ovules pendulous, often with a prominent caruncular cap; styles often swollen below, two branches connate, or connate nearly to apex with branches divergent, stigmas terminal
• Fruit a 2-4-valved capsule with remains of flower parts
• Seeds dark, usually with a basal elaiosome
• x = 8, 11 (1 report, aneuploids)

Nomenclature:

• Staavia Dahl
  • Dahl: 15 (1787)
  • Sonder: 321 (1862) in part
  • Pillans: 169 (1947)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 9, Western Cape, mainly in the southwest