Description:

• Dwarf, tufted perennials, with short internodes, or erect, ascending, rarely procumbent dwarf shrubs
• Leaves mostly short and fleshy, decussate, connate at base, ovoid, subcylindric, broadly boat-shaped or triangular, sometimes with reddish or brownish teeth on margins and keel, pale grey-green or blue-green; epidermis with rounded papillae of unequal size, smaller ones surrounding stomata, larger epidermal cells with anticlinal secondary walls, grey from a flaky wax layer
• Flowers solitary, terminal, shortly pedicellate, ebracteate, ± 50 mm in diameter; often scented; opening in early afternoon, closing at night
• Sepals 4, 2 outer ones often toothed, lanceolate, 2 shorter ones with membranous margins
• Petals 1(3-seriate, free or somewhat connate at base, linear, reflexed, mostly white, light to dark violet-red, glistening on both sides
• Stamens hairy at base, collected in a cone; staminodes 0
• Nectary a crenulate ring
• Ovary ± flat or slightly conical; placentas parietal; stigmas 8(-11), subulate, sometimes on short style
• Fruit a 8(-11)-locular capsule, near Delosperma type; with central column and thick septa between locules; valve wings long, narrow; expanding keels parallel, diverging slightly near tips; covering membranes rarely well developed, mostly reduced to a limb; closing bodies 0
• Seeds ± spherical or pear-shaped, wrinkled or warty

• Flowering in winter

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Branches erect to spreading
  • Leaves tuberculate
  • Flowers with 4 sepals, petals white, stigmas 8, opening in the morning
  • Pedicels ebracteate; fruit with rudimentary covering membranes

Nomenclature:

• Juttadinteria Schwantes
  • Schwantes: 182 (1926)
  • Walgate: 171 (1939)
  • Friedrich: 58 (1970)
  • Herre: 184 (1971)
  • Smith et al.: 148 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 10, confined to the northern Richtersveld in the Northern Cape and in Namibia it ranges from Lüderitz in the northwest to Aus in the northeast; it is common in the Sperrgebiet