Description:

• Small, perennial, much-branched, heath-like shrublets, without brachyblasts (dwarf shoots); hairs on main parts (not inside corolla tube) sculptured
• Leaves alternate (± spiralled), linear to suborbicular, sessile, dense, sometimes fascicled
• Flowers small, sessile, bracteate, in many-flowered, ovate to ± elongated, lax or compact spikes
• Bracts adnate to at least part of calyx tube, sometimes large and spreading, ovate or oblong to suborbicular, glabrous
• Calyx tubular, ± equally 5-dentate; tube campanulate or cylindrical, 5-ribbed (vascular strands), subglabrous; lobes much shorter than tube, anterior teeth sometimes more deeply incised than other 3
• Corolla tubular, sub-bilabiate, 5-lobed, leathery, glabrous; tube ± cylindrical or slightly enlarged at throat and/or curved; longer than lobes; limb spreading; upper lip 2-lobed with lobes partly fused, orange patch sometimes present, glabrous, exterior in bud; lower lip 3-lobed; lobes subequal, oblong or linear-oblong
• Stamens 4 or 2, if 4 then didynamous with upper pair arising in corolla mouth, ± exserted, and lower pair in corolla tube, included, if 2 then arising above middle of tube, fused almost to full length of corolla tube with free portion of filaments shorter than anthers, usually included or just emerging at throat; filaments linear; anthers short, synthecate, dorsifixed; staminodes 0
• Nectary small, at base of ovary on posterior side
• Ovary cylindrical, unilocular by abortion, sometimes apparently unequally bilocular with posterior locule smaller and ovule abortive; ovule 1; style filiform, entire; stigma lingulate with marginal stigmatic papillae, sometimes exserted
• Fruit a single, semi-ovoid, oblong or narrowly oblong, 1-seeded, indehiscent coccus enclosed within persistent bract and calyx, sometimes with second, smaller, membranous, empty coccus adherent to the first
• Seeds probably fusiform

Nomenclature:

• Microdon Choisy
  • Choisy: 97 (1823)
  • Rolfe: 175 (1901)
  • Hilliard: 318 (1990)
  • Hilliard: 1 (1999)
• Agathelpis Choisy
  • Choisy: 85 (1823)
  • Rolfe: 178 (1901)
  • Hartley & Balkwill: 471 (1990)
  • Hilliard: 318 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 8; Northern Cape (Kamiesberg and Calvinia) and Western Cape, mostly southwestern area from Vanrhynsdorp to Ladismith