Description:

• Evergreen, intricately branched, bluish grey, robust shrubs; branchlets arching downwards, spinescent, glabrous
• Spines robust, always floriferous and leafy, 2-4(5) nodes with leaves or leaf scars per spine
• Branches terete, young branchlets reddish brown, becoming grey, rigid, flexuous; bark splitting longitudinally, lenticels sunken
• Leaves fasciculate, in axils of spines or more often on brachyblasts on spines, coriaceous, grey, glabrous, entire; petiole ± absent; stipules minute, subulate
• Inflorescence a dichasium, borne on abbreviated branches
• Flowers bisexual, hypogynous
• Sepals 5, suborbicular, margin ciliate
• Petals 5, ovate-oblong, fleshy, margin subentire, incurved, with distinct venation on ventral face, pink to red outside, cream inside
• Disc fleshy, flat, faintly 5-lobed, margin slightly undulate, creamy white, brown-spotted
• Stamens 5, shorter than petals; anthers oblong
• Ovary 3-locular; ovules 3-6 per locule; style terete; stigma faintly 3-lobed
• Fruit a capsule, red, obconic-trigonous, smooth, chartaceous
• Seeds dark brown, almost completely enveloped by a pinkish aril

Nomenclature:

• Gloveria M.Jordaan
  • Jordaan & Van Wyk: 299 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Monotypic: Gloveria integrifolia (L.f.) M.Jordaan, confined to Northern and Western Cape