Description:

• Compact tufted perennials
• Leaves opposite, shortly united at base, 1-3 pairs on a branch, trigonously clavate with rounded keels, often twisted almost at right angles from base, firm in texture with waxy covering, ± 40 mm long, purplish green to yellowish
• Flowers terminal, 1-3; pedicel bracteolate; opening in late morning, open all day, long-lasting
• Sepals 5 or 6, nearly equal
• Petals 2- or 3-seriate, free, linear, pink with white bases, or white
• Stamens: filaments epapillate; anthers yellow or orange
• Staminodes present
• Nectary appearing annular, of 5 separate crenulate glands, touching each other
• Ovary obconic, flattish on top; placentas parietal; stigmas 5 or 6, short, acute
• Fruit a 5- or 6-locular capsule; persisting on the plant; shortly obconic to nearly flat, with raised sutures on top; possibly close to Mitrophyllum type because of its widely diverging, broad expanding keels ending in awns, but valve wings absent; valves with high rims, only opening into a vertical position; spongy tissue separating locules; covering membranes stiff, acute, with dense mass of funicles at openings of locules
• Seeds acutely ovoid, microscopically tuberculate
• x = 9

• Flowering in autumn and winter

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Small tufted perennials flowering in mid-winter
  • Leaves purplish green with a partially peeling waxy covering
  • Capsule valves open to vertical position only

Nomenclature:

• Cerochlamys N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 171 (1928)
  • Herre: 110 (1971)
  • Hartmann: 44 (1998)
  • Smith et al.: 138 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 3, in crevices of rocks or in shaly places in the Little and Great Karoo, Western Cape