Description:

• Dwarf, succulent perennials, forming clumps or mats, mostly subterranean, with leaf tips protruding above ground; stems and roots fleshy
• Leaves few on each stem or branch, clavate, apically windowed; epidermis smooth, crystal sand present in guard cells of stomatal apparatus
• Flowers 1((3), pedicel long; ± 80 mm in diameter; opening at midday, closing late afternoon
• Sepals 5, with membranous margins
• Petals in 1 to several whorls, free, linear, yellow or white
• Stamens many, with or without basal papillae; staminodes 0
• Nectary a crenulate ring
• Ovary half-inferior; placentas parietal; stigmas 8(16, spreading, plumose
• Fruit a 8(16-locular capsule of Leipoldtia type, but with small closing bodies; becoming detached from plant and acting as tumble fruit; expanding keels parallel, diverging at tips, with teeth; valve wings small, with diverging tips; axile column firm; covering membranes well developed
• Seeds somewhat conical, whitish, with brown tip
• x = 9 (1 report)

• Flowering from mid-winter to spring

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Plants mostly underground with windowed tips visible
  • Leaf surface smooth
  • Capsule multilocular
  • Flowers yellow or white, without filamentous staminodes

Nomenclature:

• Fenestraria N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 433 (1925)
  • Friedrich: 46 (1970)
  • Herre: 158 (1971)
  • Hartmann: 145 (1982)
  • Smith et al.: 100 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 1: Fenestraria rhopalophylla (Schltr. & Diels) N.E.Br., with 2 subspecies, surroundings of Lüderitz, southwards along the coast of Namibia into the Richtersveld (Northern Cape)