Description:

• Dwarf shrublets, tufted or producing prostrate branches, often forming small mats
• Leaves opposite, sheathing at base, 6-8 on branchlets, often oblong or spatulate, obtusely keeled, often obtusely toothed on margins and keel, surface somewhat warty and rough
• Flowers solitary, terminal, pedicellate, ebracteate, 20-50 mm in diameter; open from late afternoon to early evening
• Sepals 5, unequal, 3-angled
• Petals 2- or 3-seriate, lanceolate, golden yellow, with reddish tips
• Stamens many, converging
• Nectary of 5 separate, somewhat crenulate glands, distinct
• Ovary: top flat or nearly so; placentas parietal; stigmas 5, filiform
• Fruit a 5-locular capsule, of Drosanthemum type; with broad valve wings; covering membranes present
• Seeds obtusely hooked, somewhat rough, small, light yellow

• Flowering in summer

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Small, compact, creeping perennials
  • Leaves with soft whitish teeth
  • Flowers yellow

Nomenclature:

• Chasmatophyllum Dinter & Schwantes
  • Schwantes: 14, 17 (1927)
  • Friedrich: 23 (1970)
  • Herre: 112 (1971)
  • Smith et al.: 182 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 6, a wide, but sparse distribution in the interior, stretching from the Karas Mountains in Namibia in the west, scattered in the Great and Little Karoos, Eastern Cape, North-West and Gauteng to Mpumalanga