Description:

• Small, succulent perennials, wholly glabrous, forming mats or ± diffuse clumps
• Stems 6-8-angled, procumbent or ascending, branching and re-branching, in part subterranean, entirely leafless, tesselate, tubercles convex or pyramidal, tipped with a soft green apiculus which dries and hardens with age
• Flowers in fascicles of usually 5-15, from abbreviated, persistent peduncles near angles on upper and middle parts of stems, developing in quick succession
• Sepals small, fleshy
• Corolla ± 9 mm in diameter with very shallow tube completely filled by corona, almost rotate, outside greyish white to pale green, glabrous except for tube and base of lobes which are sparsely covered with short, rigid, erect bristles; inside yellowish, with obtuse, conical papillae, each tipped with an acute seta; lobes spreading to reflexed, margins folded back, without cilia
• Corona 2-seriate, seemingly arising from surface of flat corolla and extending much above it with staminiform lobes emarginate or incised into 10 almost equal segments; these ascending with the 5 styliform lobes or incumbent on gynostegium
• Anthers 2-locular, horizontal on style head
• Pollinia ellipsoidal with pellucid margin along outer edge
• Follicles erect, slender, glabrous, smooth
• x = 11 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Notechidnopsis Lavranos & Bleck
  • Lavranos & Bleck: 255 (1985)
  • Bruyns: 327 (1999)
• Echidnopsis Hook.f.
  • Hooker: t. 5930 (1871)
  • White & Sloane: 975 (1937)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 2, Northern and Western Cape (endemic to Namaqualand)