Description:

• Acaulescent to shortly stemmed, succulent perennials; decumbent or erect, rarely pendulous; solitary or proliferating from base; 0.15-1 m tall
• Leaves succulent, distichous in juvenile stage (which may persist), spirally arranged or rosulate, lorate, lanceolate to ensiform or deltoid; erectly spreading to strongly recurved; both surfaces smooth or rugulose, tubercles white or greenish; usually with distinct adaxial acentral keel; margins acute or rounded, marginal tubercles often merging apically to form continuous white band; apex acute, rarely retuse, mucronate
• Inflorescence a laxly flowered raceme or panicle; erectly spreading to horizontal, often pink in upper half; bracteate
• Flowers tubular, usually markedly bulbous (gasteriform) at base for up to two-thirds of its length, curved upwards and outwards, usually borne pendulously secund, pedicellate
• Perianth segments with apices free, fused above when wilted; usually 3-coloured, reddish pink, green and with short, yellow or white-tipped lobes, rarely nearly white or uniformly pink with yellow
• Stamens included or barely exserted; filaments white, filiform, slightly flattened
• Ovary oblong-ovoid, with many axile ovules; style filiform; stigma minute, becoming shortly exserted, exceeding anthers after anthesis
• Capsule erect, green, cylindric, oblong to oblong-ovoid, apically truncate, chartaceous to woody when dry
• Seeds dark brown to black, irregularly angled, laterally compressed, obscurely winged
• x = 7

Nomenclature:

• Gasteria Duval
  • Duval: 6 (1809)
  • Baker: 286 (1896-1897)
  • Berger: 122 (1908)
  • Phillips: 148 (1926)
  • Phillips: 186 (1951)
  • Schelpe: 17 (1958)
  • Sölch et al.: 49 (1970)
  • Van Jaarsveld: 6 (1992)
  • Van Jaarsveld: 33 (1994)
  • Van Jaarsveld et al.: 468 (1994)
  • Van Jaarsveld: 65 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Southern Africa and Mozambique
• Southern Africa: Species 18 and varieties 8, mainly in the Western and Eastern Cape, with outliers in Namibia, Northern Cape, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal