Description:

• Dwarf, prostrate perennials; stems wiry to slightly woody, 1-1.5 mm in diameter, with distinct nodes and internodes; pinkish green when young, brown when old
• Leaves opposite, similar, connate at base, trigonous to club-shaped, usually shorter than 10 mm, glabrous, dull sea-green to dark green; epidermis with tanniniferous idioblasts, resulting in a slightly verrucose surface
• Flowers solitary, terminal, subsessile or shortly pedicellate, ± 10 mm in diameter; opening at night; faintly sweet-scented
• Sepals 5, subequal, united at base to form a short tube, ovate-triangular, longer than petals, pinkish green
• Petals 1- or 2-seriate, inserted at base of calyx tube, free, narrowly linear to subspatulate, obtuse or occasionally acuminate, ± 4 X 1.0-1.5 mm, papery, off-white with a slight cream tinge
• Stamens erect to slightly inflexed, inner whorl bearded at base; staminodes present or 0; pollen yellowish, tricolpate, semitectate with reticulate sculpture and supratectal spinules
• Nectary a dark green, crenulate ring, broken ± clearly into 5 parts corresponding with sepals
• Ovary deeply concave on top; placentas basal to parietal; stigmas 5(6), subulate, 2 mm long, curved outwards
• Fruit a 5(6) locular capsule, ± of Delosperma type but without valve wings; expanding tissue composed of radial, contiguous keels to apex of each valve and expanding sheet; covering membranes 0 but ledges of deeply split septa may cover locules slightly; closing bodies 0 but funicles conspicuous, swelling when wet
• Seeds ovoid, smooth

• Flowering early to mid-summer

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Creeping, very small perennials
  • Flowers with hypanthium, white, opening at night

Nomenclature:

• Mossia N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 71, 151 (1930)
  • Herre: 218 (1971)
  • Smith, Hartzer & Van Wyk: 16 (1997)
  • Smith et al.: 272 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 1: Mossia intervallaris (L.Bolus) N.E.Br., in a narrow band more or less to the west of the Drakensberg massif, from Barkly East in the Eastern Cape to the E Free State and NW Lesotho. Isolated populations have been recorded from the Free State, Mpumalanga and Gauteng