Description:

• Shrubs or shrublets, often forming dense bushes, either arising from a single stem at base or with several stems coppicing after fires; branchlets short, slender, often puberulous
• Leaves usually alternate, subulate, lanceolate, ovate, elliptic, or cordate, adpressed or spreading, ciliate, ciliolate or eciliate, sessile, or (in M. villosa) with short petiole
• Flowers very small, terminal, (1-)5-8(-14)-aggregate, or in M. barbigera pedunculate; flowers subtended by 1 bract and 2 bracteoles, usually sessile
• Calyx 5-lobed, persisting if fertile
• Petals 5, crisp-bearded about middle, sometimes sparsely ciliate towards the middle at the sides, white or cream-white; staminodes 5, vestigial (in M. cassiopoides 0.7 mm long)
• Stamens 5; filaments becoming 3-9 mm long, carrying spent anthers beyond petals, glabrous; anthers dorsifixed; apical gland globose, minute, usually sessile
• Disc enveloping the ovary, nectariferous
• Ovary (2)3(4)-carpellate, glabrous; stigma simple or capitellate; style becoming 3.5-9 mm long, usually exceeding the petals by a long way, glabrous, filiform
• Fruit normally 3-carpellate with only 1 or 2 developing; horns (1.5-)3-5 mm long; seeds with white aril adjacent to truncated apex

Nomenclature:

• Macrostylis Bartl. & H.L.Wendl.
  • Bartling & Wendland: 191 (1824)
  • Williams: 373 (1981)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 10, concentrated in Western Cape, extending northwards to Clanwilliam and eastwards to Uitenhage (Eastern Cape)