Description:

• Shrubs or shrublets, erect or decumbent, often branching from the base; stems smooth
• Leaves acutely 3-angled, always with mucro, ± smooth, with a thin wax layer, often with hyaline dots
• Flowers in many-flowered inflorescences, sometimes reduced to single flowers, sometimes almost sessile; often staying open day and night
• Sepals 5
• Petals free, ± linear but spoon-shaped in E. pillansii (Kensit) Liede, white, pink or puce
• Stamens arising from inner surface or top of calyx tube, either partly or completely covered by staminodes
• Nectary a series of small teeth in a continuous ring or rarely in groups of five
• Ovary concave on top, forming an hypanthium with stamens bending down into it; placentas parietal; stigmas 5(9-13), very small, ± narrowly conical to almost globular
• Fruit a capsule of ± Lampranthus type, usually 5-locular, rarely 9-13-locular, woody, base funnel-shaped; expanding keels ending in awns; valve wings variable; covering membranes with lateral-marginal closing ledges; closing bodies 0
• Seeds large (0.9-1.6 mm long), dark brown, surface rough
• x = 9 (1 report)

• Flowering in summer

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Shrubs with sharp-tipped leaves
  • Flowers with distinct hypanthium into which stamens bend

Nomenclature:

• Erepsia N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 433 (1925)
  • Herre: 150 (1971)
  • Liede: 391 (1989)
  • Liede: 1 (1990)
  • Hartmann: 44 (1998)
  • Smith et al.: 322 (1998)
• Kensitia Fedde
  • Fedde: 11 (1940)
  • Herre: 186 (1971)
• Piquetia N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 433 (1925) not of H.Hallier (1921)
• Semnanthe N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 12 (1927)
  • Herre: 284 (1971)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 28, mainly found in the winter-rainfall area of the Western Cape, with an outlier around Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape