Description :

• Sturdy shrubs, or even trees (Von Breitenbach 1990: 30) up to 3 m tall and 3.5 m wide, usually with a solitary main stem; branches succulent at first, soon becoming woody
• Leaves decussate, slightly connate at base, boat-shaped or somewhat clavate, with somewhat flattened upper surface and keeled towards apex, mucronate; epidermal cells convex, stomata slightly sunken
• Flowers many (up to 50), in dense, rounded, compound dichasia, pedicellate, bibracteate; bracts club-shaped
• Sepals 5 or 6, triangular
• Petals ± 1-seriate, short, white to light-pink
• Stamens and staminodes papillate at base, in a dense cone
• Nectary a crenulate ring
• Ovary top-shaped; placentas parietal; stigmas 5(6), short, slightly plumose
• Fruit a 5(6)-locular capsule, nearest Ruschia type, top-shaped, upper part domed; valve margins slightly raised in most species; locules deep and wide; valves opening once; valve wings broad, sclerotinised; closing bodies absent or present
• Seeds flat to pear-shaped and shortly winged; testa cells vaulted, rough; dispersed by wind (anemochoric)

• Flowering winter to spring

• Distinguishing characters :
  • Shrublets or large bushes
  • Fruit with hard valve wings, and recurved valve rims, not closing completely once they have opened

Nomenclature:

• Stoeberia Dinter & Schwantes
  • Schwantes: 14, 17 (1927)
  • Friedrich: 554 (1960)
  • Friedrich: 128 (1970)
  • Herre: 294 (1971)
  • Van Jaarsveld: 68 (1994)
  • Hartmann: 29 (1996)
  • Smith et al.: 366 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 5, Namaqualand (Northern Cape) and Namibia