Description:

• Mostly annual herbs, 1 species perennial, markedly glandular; stems leafy throughout, glandular-pubescent, narrowly winged by decurrent leaf bases
• Leaves mostly opposite, sometimes opposite to alternate, rarely pseudofascicled, usually ± elliptical, rarely oblanceolate or oblong-elliptical, petiolate to subsessile, entire to toothed, bases decurrent forming ridges or narrow wings down stem, mostly pubescent on both surfaces
• Flowers solitary in axils of upper leaves or bracts, forming a terminal raceme
• Bracts alternate, leaf-like, adnate to extreme base of pedicel
• Calyx obscurely bilabiate, 5-lobed almost to base
• Corolla nearly regular, 5-lobed; tube narrowly cylindrical, ± abruptly dilated in throat, pubescent outside, throat with band or 2 patches of unicellular, clavate hairs inside; lobes rotate or reflexed, minutely glandular around mouth and just inside throat; posterior lobes exterior in bud
• Stamens 4 or 2 + 2 staminodes (anterior), sometimes with a minute head containing a few pollen grains, didynamous; posterior filaments arising near top of corolla tube, decurrent to base of tube forming a channel for the style; anterior pair arising in throat, exceeding posterior pair, included or just visible in throat; anthers synthecate, dorsifixed
• Nectary lateral, very small, completely adnate to ovary base
• Ovary bilocular, cuneate, tapering into style, glandular-pubescent, often also densely clad in glistening glands; ovules many per locule; style long, filiform; stigma very short, broadly hastate with 2 lateral, sticky, receptive surfaces, or narrowly hastate and clad all round in stigmatic papillae, either included or very shortly exserted
• Fruit a somewhat beaked, relatively large, septicidal capsule with a short, longitudinal split at tip of each valve, conspicuously glandular
• Seeds many, ± elliptical, black, rarely with pale terminal wings; testa thin, tightly investing endosperm, which has 6-8 longitudinal rows of transversely elongated pits in chequer-board pattern (bothrospermous)
• x = 6, 7 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Lyperia Benth.
  • Bentham: 377 (1836)
  • Bentham: 357 (1846)
  • Hilliard: 212 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 6, Namibia, Northern Cape (Namaqualand) and Western Cape (from Ganab south to the Cape Peninsula and east to near Uniondale)