Description:

• Compact, erect to prostrate shrublets
• Leaves opposite, nearly equal, connate up to half their length, triquetrous, sometimes apiculate, with serrate and cartilaginous keels and margins, ± 25 mm long, 15 mm broad; velvety from long papillae, stomata overarched by papillae, outer epidermal wall thick
• Flowers 1(-3), solitary or in cymes, pedicellate or occasionally sessile, ± 40 mm in diameter; opening midday to late afternoon
• Sepals 5, exterior 2 flattened, inner ones with conspicuous, membranous margins
• Petals 1-5-seriate, purple to pink, rarely white
• Stamens: filaments slightly ciliate-papillate; staminodes present
• Nectary an inconspicuous, minutely crenulate ring
• Ovary slightly elevated to slightly concave; placentas parietal; stigmas (4)5(-7), subulate
• Fruit a (4)5(-7)-locular capsule, of Lampranthus type but covering membranes not as broad and long as in typical form; lacking closing ledges; expanding keels parallel, lacerate, aristate; covering membranes well developed or reduced to a limb; closing bodies 0; valve wings present
• Seeds somewhat globose, echinate
• x = 9 (1 report)

• Flowering from mid-summer to early winter

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Shrublets
  • Leaves fused for half their length, often with cartilaginous or serrated edges, sometimes velvety with a sharp tip
  • Seeds echinate

Nomenclature:

• Braunsia Schwantes
  • Schwantes: 644 (1928)
  • Bolus: 306 (1967)
  • Herre: 96 (1971)
  • Smith et al.: 276 (1998)
• Echinus L.Bolus
  • Bolus: t. 266 (1927)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 5, southwestern part of South Africa, mostly in arid areas of the Western and S Northern Cape including the Little Karoo, and at Matjiesfontein and Laingsburg in the Great Karoo