Description:

• Compact, tufted perennials up to ± 100 mm high, rarely creeping, internodes usually ± hidden by sheathing leaf bases
• Leaves opposite, crowded in basal rosette, sharply triquetrous, 30-50 mm long, keel and margins often with small teeth, spreading, reflexed, smooth, grey-green to dark green
• Flowers solitary, bracteate, ± 40 mm in diameter; opening midday, closing by evening
• Sepals 5 or 6, nearly equal, ovate, sometimes with membranous margins
• Petals 1-3-seriate, narrowly linear-lanceolate, often emarginate, white to pink, usually with a conspicuous pink to magenta centre line and sometimes also with darker-coloured margins and tip
• Stamens: filaments connivent to erect, papillate at least at base, white to reddish above; anthers white; staminodes 0 to few
• Nectary a crested, dark green ring
• Ovary top conical; stigmas 5, ± broadly subulate, short, plumose; placentation parietal
• Fruit a 5-locular capsule, nearest Ruschia type, woody, valves opening incompletely; valve wings awn-like or rarely absent; expanding keels slightly diverging; covering membranes stiff, complete; closing bodies large, lens-shaped
• Seeds pear-shaped, rough with microscopic ± spherical knobs, dark brown to almost black
• x = 9 (1 report)

• Flowering in early spring

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Tufted or creeping perennials with sharply triquetrous leaves which are toothed on keel and at apex
  • Solitary flowers usually with striped petals and white pollen
  • Fruit with lens-shaped closing bodies

Nomenclature:

• Acrodon N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 12 (1927)
  • Herre: 62 (1971)
  • Glen: 212 (1986)
  • Hartmann: 29 (1996)
  • Burgoyne (1998)
  • Smith et al.: 178 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 4, found in a broad band in the coastal region of SW and S Western Cape, including wetter parts of the Little Karoo and SW Eastern Cape