Description:

• Woody shrubs or shrublets, variable in habit
• Leaves simple, variable, linear, lanceolate, elliptic, oblanceolate or cordate to almost round, pungent, palmately-nerved, often drying black; stipules usually present, small, persistent
• Flowers usually yellow, 4-many, in terminal heads; bracts large, imbricate, clasping flowers; bracts large and conspicuous, sometimes foliaceous or petaloid; bracteoles 0
• Calyx with shortly campanulate tube intruse at base; lobes longer than tube; 4 upper lobes lanceolate, acute, usually united for some distance; lower lobe longer than others, sometimes as large as vexillum, petaloid
• Petals: vexillum usually elliptic-oblong, ovate to circular; keel broad with an upward-directed beak or narrow with a forwardly-directed beak, subacute
• Stamens 10, diadelphous, unequal, vexillar stamen free, the other 9 connate in a dorsally open tube; anthers versatile, linear, ovate, or sometimes subsagittate
• Ovary sessile or shortly stalked, few-ovuled, villous; style villous below, with small, terminal stigma
• Pod coriaceous, ovate or oblong, flat, oblique, compressed, 2-valved, hairy, glabrescent
• Seeds oblong-reniform, appendaged
• x = 9

Nomenclature:

• Liparia L.
  • Linnaeus: 156 (1771)
  • Harvey: 14 (1862)
  • Bos: 269 (1967)
  • Schutte & Van Wyk: 573 (1994)
  • Schutte: 149 (1995)
• Priestleya DC. sect. Priestleya

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species ± 20, SW Western Cape and eastwards to Eastern Cape: Uitenhage and Port Elizabeth Districts