Description:

• Perennial or occasionally biennial herbs, usually with a short main stem ending in a tuft of leaves with mostly prostrate flowering branches; often with a tuberous rootstock
• Leaves opposite, sometimes alternate, slightly stem-clasping, triquetrous or ± terete, sometimes slightly concave on upper surface, up to 400 mm long, entirely without bladder cells; deciduous after fruiting
• Flowers solitary, terminal, on long, ebracteate pedicels, variable in size, up to 130 mm in diameter, often with unpleasant smell; opening in afternoon and closing at sunset
• Sepals 5, terete or subulate, from broad base
• Petals free, in several series, linear, margins papillate, in various shades of yellow, rarely white above and salmon on lower surface
• Stamens: many, filaments bearded at base; staminodes many
• Nectary a low, weakly crenulate ring
• Ovary concave or somewhat conical in centre above; placentas parietal or basal; ovules several per locule; stigmas 10-25, filiform
• Fruit a 10-25-locular capsule, large, ± xerochastic - seed dispersal dependent on separation of valves by desiccation; with two parietal seed pockets per locule; without expanding keels; each valve with a pair of thin, submembranous, wing-like, locular partitions on inner face
• Seeds subglobose, often slightly keeled, smooth
• x = 9

• Flowering spring to early summer

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Perennial or biennial
  • Leaves elongated
  • Flowers yellow or whitish yellow
  • Fruit distinctive, cone-shaped, 10-25-locular, without expanding keels, with seed pockets

Nomenclature:

• Conicosia N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 433 (1925)
  • Herre: 116 (1971)
  • Hartmann: 52 (1993)
  • Smith et al.: 68 (1998)
• Herrea Schwantes
  • Schwantes: 436 (1927)
  • Herre: 170 (1971)
  • Ihlenfeldt & Gerbaulet: 457 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 2, western parts of South Africa (Western and Northern Cape) as well as S Namibia. Conicosia pugioniformis (L.) N.E.Br. subsp. muirii (N.E.Br.) Ihlenf. & Gerbaulet occurs in a distinct belt along the coastal regions as far east as Knysna.
  • C. pugioniformis has been introduced to SE Australia and Victoria