Description:

• Foetid shrubs; branches, straight, rigid, subspinescent with age, shallowly ribbed by decurrent leaf bases when young, glandular-pubescent, glabrescent
• Leaves alternate, fascicled on young wood, obovate, cuneate, obtuse, entire to toothed, base of petiole persistent
• Flowers pedicellate and bibracteolate, grouped in miniature thyrses arising from leaf fascicles on ultimately spinescent branchlets, overtopping leaves
• Bracts free from pedicel and calyx
• Calyx obscurely bilabiate, 5-lobed nearly to base, ± glabrous
• Corolla bilabiate, 5-lobed; tube funnel-shaped, mouth ± round; lobes spreading, suborbicular, glabrous outside, inside with clavate unicellular or bicellular hairs in sinuses, otherwise glabrous; 2 posterior lobes outside in bud
• Stamens 4, didynamous; filaments arising near base of tube, decurrent; posterior pair somewhat hairy, included; anterior ones glabrous, shortly exserted, exceeding posterior pair; anthers synthecate, thecae ± transverse; staminode 1, long
• Nectary not conspicuous, possibly very shallowly annular
• Ovary bilocular, deltoid, glabrous; ovules ± 6-12 per locule; stigma very minutely bifid, arms not separating, terminally papillose, very shortly exserted
• Fruit a septicidal capsule, each valve with a short loculicidal split; placenta with ± clavate, unicellular hairs
• Seeds ± ellipsoid, brown; testa thin, reticulate

Nomenclature:

• Antherothamnus N.E.Br.
  • Brown: t. 3007 (1915)
  • Verdoorn & Schweickerdt: 447 (1937)
  • Merxmüller & Roessler: 8 (1967)
  • Philcox: 20 (1990)
  • Hilliard: 75 (1994)
• Selaginastrum Schinz & Thell.
  • Schinz & Thellung: 119 (1929)
  • Verdoorn & Schweickerdt: 447 (1937)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Monotypic: Antherothamnus pearsonii N.E.Br., SW Zimbabwe and southern Africa
• Southern Africa: S Namibia and Botswana, Northern Province, North-West and Northern Cape