Description:

• Small, delicate herbs to ± 0.15 m in height, ± whole plant softly pilose; stem short, mostly unbranched
• Leaves opposite and decussate, in a loose rosette, petiolate, broadly elliptic, crenate, pubescent
• Flowers axillary, single, bracteate, long-pedicellate, in a terminal, sometimes lateral raceme (appearing cymose as the uppermost, fully developed flower overtops the arrested or rudimentary apex and looks like part of main axis
• Bracts: lower ones opposite, upper ones alternate; bracteoles 2, opposite, ± halfway up pedicel
• Calyx tubular, 5-lobed, shorter than corolla tube, ± radial at first, then clearly bilabiate; tube shallowly campanulate; lobes subequal, ovate-oblong, equal to or longer than tube
• Corolla bilabiate, tubular, pale blue; tube short, broad, subcampanulate, somewhat pouched on posterior side, white within, throat bearded on upper side; posterior lip 2-lobed, one lobe exterior, rarely partly so, other interior in bud; anterior lip 3-lobed, usually middle one outside; all lobes broad, obovate, spreading, subequal
• Stamens 4(5), subequal, arising a little above base of corolla tube, included; filaments terete, rather short, curved, glabrous; anthers bithecate, thecae diverging or nearly parallel, each theca with 2 pollen sacs becoming confluent at maturity, dehiscing longitudinally by slit between sacs; staminode 1 or 0
• Ovary bilocular, ovoid, villous; ovules many on axile, mushroom-shaped placenta; style linear, scarcely exserted, entire, persistent; stigma slightly 2-lobed
• Fruit an ovoid, somewhat compressed, laterally grooved, apiculate or acuminate capsule, loculicidal and partly septicidal; after anthesis pedicels becoming strongly recurved
• Seeds many, broadly elliptical, longitudinally furrowed (aulacospermous), apex obtuse, sometimes mucronate, base with pointed appendix; testa black, reticulate
• x = 10 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Charadrophila Marloth
  • Marloth: 358, t. 8 (1899)
  • Hiern: 370 (1904)
  • Weber: 87 (1989)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Monotypic: Charadrophila capensis Marloth; Western Cape, rare in small moist gorges near Stellenbosch and on Hangklip Peninsula
  • Due to its habit which resembles that of members of Gesneriaceae, formerly sometimes considered to belong to that family [e.g. Engler in Marloth (1899)]