Description:

• Freely branching, dwarf, prostrate perennials, forming mats less than 20 mm high, often rooting at nodes; mimicking its surroundings and difficult to find; adventitious roots thickened as storage organs
• Leaves opposite, 4-6 pairs per branch, ± erect, somewhat connate at base, trigonous to club-shaped or terete, up to ± 10 mm long, apex broad, covered by bands of reddish green, orange or greyish green warts
• Flowers solitary, ± 12 mm in diameter, on short, slender, curved pedicels, ± 20 mm long, without bracts; opening at twilight and closing before dawn; pleasantly scented like pineapple or liquorice
• Sepals 5, subequal
• Petals 2-seriate, yellowish, pinkish or greenish
• Stamens glabrous, epapillate
• Nectary an obscurely crenulate ring
• Ovary somewhat convex on top; placentation basal to parietal; stigmas 4-6, slender, golden yellow
• Fruit a 4-6-locular capsule, of Delosperma type with erect septa; expanding keels parallel, diverging slightly at tips; valve wings 0; covering membranes sometimes well developed, otherwise reduced to a limb; closing devices 0
• Seeds pear-shaped, coarse-textured, attached to floor and walls of capsule

• Flowering over a long period in summer

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Minute perennials with strongly textured leaves
  • Pedicels long and slender
  • Flowers nocturnal, highly scented

Nomenclature:

• Neohenricia L.Bolus
  • Bolus: 251 (1931)
  • Bolus: 51 (1938)
  • Herre: 230 (1971)
  • Hammer: 84 (1994)
  • Smith et al.: 166 (1998)
• Henricia L.Bolus
  • Bolus: 39 (1936)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 2, occurs in a belt stretching from Victoria West in the Northern Cape to Fauresmith in the Free State. The recently discovered species: Neohenricia spiculata S.A.Hammer, occurs in small isolated populations near Sterkstroom, in the Eastern Cape