Description:

• Small to fairly robust herbs, sometimes with thalloid bodies only or developing stems on which leaves and inflorescences are borne
• Stems erect, branched, woody, often sparsely to densely covered with small, imbricate leaves or bracts
• Leaves dimorphous: (a) floating, linear, often branching dichotomously; (b) bract-like, hard, often dentate, in many species covering the abbreviated, fertile shoots
• Flowers single in axils of bract-like leaves, aggregated towards apices; spathella obovoid, apiculate, splitting laterally, apex remaining intact; flower recurved in spathella, becoming erect at anthesis, pedicelled
• Perianth 0 or of 2 minute, subulate segments situated on each side of stamen(s)
• Stamens 1 or 2, if 2, with filaments fused nearly to apex; pollen in monads or diads
• Ovary ovoid to fusiform; styles 2, subulate, papillate, usually recurved
• Capsule ovoid to ellipsoid, 10-ribbed, with all ribs running entire length of capsule, opening by 2 subequal valves; one or both persistent

Nomenclature:

• Ledermanniella Engl.
  • Engler: 378 (1909)
  • Obermeyer: 208 (1970)
• Inversodicraea Engl.
  • Engler: 271 (1915)
  • Obermeyer: 208 (1970)
  • Cusset: 361 (1983)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 15
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Ledermanniella warmingiana (Gilg) C.Cusset, Kunene River, Namibia