Description :

• Spreading, glabrous perennial herbs, up to 600 mm wide, 200 mm high; branches procumbent to decumbent, often supported by surrounding vegetation, terete, up to 300 mm long, 3-4 mm in diameter, from a persistent tuberous base; branches, leaves and fruit grey green becoming purplish green with age; older subterranean branches becoming brown, longitudinally fissured; tubers oblong, divided, resprouting after a fire
• Leaves alternate, crowded and rosulate at base at first, laxly arranged on flowering sideshoots, linear, oblanceolate, 45-160 × 6-10 mm, dorsiventrally flattened, becoming channelled in lower half, ascending, apices bending upwards
• Flowers solitary, terminal, ± 40 mm in diameter; pedicels slender, 30-90 mm long
• Sepals 5, unequal
• Petals 3- or 4-seriate, shorter than sepals, pure white
• Stamens surrounded by staminodes
• Nectary a low, crenulate ring
• Ovary : placentas basal, in shallow locules; stigmas 5, filiform
• Fruit a 5-locular capsule; opening apically when drying (xerochastic); floor of capsule distally widened to form a covered ring of semipockets
• Seeds dimorphic, the smaller type probably sterile; compressed horseshoe- to bean-shaped, verrucose, dark brown; dispersal by scattering

• Flowering in spring and early summer

• Distinguishing characters :
  • Perennial herbs with tubers
  • Leaves alternate, flat
  • Flowers white
  • Fruit 5-locular, cone-shaped, ends of valves split upon drying and remain so
  • Seeds dimorphic

Nomenclature:

• Saphesia N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 205 (1932)
  • Herre: 274 (1971)
  • Ihlenfeldt & Gerbaulet: 457 (1990)
  • Van Jaarsveld: 98 (1994)
  • Smith et al.: 76 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species l: Saphesia flaccida (Jacq.) N.E.Br., in sandy soil on the plains north of Cape Town, from Malmesbury and Clanwilliam districts, Western Cape