Description:

• Ericoid shrubs or shrublets, usually single-stemmed at base
• Leaves opposite or alternate, simple, linear to orbicular, obtuse or acute, sessile or shortly petiolate, often complicate when dry, erect, often imbricate, adpressed or spreading, gland-dotted, margins glandular-denticulate, ciliate or eciliate, midrib prominent
• Flowers solitary or occasionally 2- or 3-nate or in terminal clusters 4-25 mm in diameter, terminal; bracts 1(2), leaf-like or reduced; bracteoles 2, much reduced
• Calyx deeply divided; lobes 5, persistent
• Petals 5, in most cases clawed, often bearded and bent inward at the throat, pink or white
• Stamens 5; filaments short, acicular, normally glabrous; anthers 5, 2-locular, dorsifixed, not protruding; apical gland immersed, semi-immersed, globose or pointed, or large and conical; staminodes 5, vestigial or short, normally glabrous, glandular or pointed at the apex, not protruding
• Disc cupular, exceeding the ovary, often equalling the stigma at first
• Ovary (2-4)5-carpellate, ± 1 mm in diameter; apices globose, sometimes bifid or sometimes retuse with an immersed gland; stigma capitate; style short, glabrous, usually erect, sometimes deflexed
• Fruit normally 5-carpellate, either exposed or hidden beneath persistent calyx lobes, usually with horns very short; seeds black, usually shining, with white or partly black arillus

Nomenclature:

• Acmadenia Bartl. & H.L.Wendl.
  • Bartling & Wendland: 59 (1824)
  • Williams: 169 (1982)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 33, mainly in Western Cape, extending eastwards into Eastern Cape