Description:

• Almost stemless tufted perennials with a thick and firmly fleshy rootstock, deeply rooting
• Leaves opposite, united at base in sparse rosettes, spatulate-ovate or spatulate-lanceolate, flat on ground to erect, dark green to reddish brown and inconspicuously dotted, velvety
• Flowers solitary or in delayed sets of three, pedicellate, bracteate at base of thick pedicel; opening in late afternoon or evening
• Sepals 5, subequal
• Petals in 3 or 4 series, free, linear to narrowly spatulate, pale to deep yellow or a greyish salmon colour sometimes obscurely striped with white
• Stamens erect, in a loose cylindrical mass, papillate
• Nectary glands large, in a crenulate ring
• Ovary flattish or slightly convex on top, glassy; placentas basal to parietal; stigmas 8-12, erect, subulate
• Fruit a 8-12-locular capsule, shortly obconic, flattish at top, with raised sutures; valves narrowly deltoid, with a very prominent, acute keel on inner face; expanding keels diverging from base, ± half as long as valve, each tipped with a pallid awn reaching nearly to tips of valves, and with short, broad, membranous marginal wings at base united in pairs between valves; covering membranes rather stiff, closing bodies small
• Seeds pear-shaped, smooth

• Flowering from winter to early spring

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Rosette-forming perennials with tuberous roots
  • Leaves spatulate-ovate or spatulate-lanceolate, velvety and often dust-covered
  • Flowers deep yellow to salmon-coloured, opening in the afternoon

Nomenclature:

• Deilanthe N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 137 (1931)
  • Hammer: 172 (1995)
  • Smith et al.: 160 (1998)
• Aloinopsis Schwantes, in part

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 2, widespread in the Little and Great Karoos in the central Western Cape, extending slightly into the Northern and Eastern Cape
  • Species of Deilanthe grow from Anysberg in the southwest to Luckhoff in the northeast
  • A single species, D. peersii (L.Bolus) N.E.Br., occurs in the Free State