Description:

• Shrublet, much branched; branchlets softly pilose, subherbaceous, leafy
• Leaves alternate and scarcely opposite, ovate- or rotund-deltoid, dentate or incised, petiolate
• Flowers solitary, axillary, pedicellate, ebracteate, yellow, sometimes white or cream
• Calyx 5-lobed almost to base, villous; segments somewhat unequal, lanceolate to elliptic, slightly imbricate
• Corolla campanulate, 5-lobed; tube of medium length, broad, somewhat declinate at base, slightly incurved and ascending, nearly erect, with 2 gibbosities or short pouches in front, lined with oil-secreting trichomes; lobes broad, spreading, nearly equal, shorter than tube; upper 2 exterior in bud
• Stamens 4, didynamous, declinate; filaments arising at base of corolla tube, short, thick, terete, incurved, glandular; anthers at length unithecate by confluence of 2 diverging thecae; staminode 1
• Ovary ovoid, bilocular; ovules many; style short, thick, terete; stigma truncate or emarginate, thinly stigmatose
• Fruit an ovoid, acuminate, bilocular, septicidal capsule; valves 2, coriaceous, bifid
• Seeds many, black, oblong, furrowed, oblique at one end, with white aril at the other; testa adpressed, granular-rugose
• x = 10 (1 report, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Colpias E.Mey. ex Benth.
  • Bentham: 53 (1836)
  • Hiern: 168 (1904)
  • Steiner: 63 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Monotypic: Colpias mollis E.Mey. ex Benth., Northern Cape (Richtersveld to Calvinia); in rock crevices in sheltered kloofs. Pollinated by oil-collecting bees