Description:

• Compact tufted perennials, branching from base into clumps, with tuberous rootstock
• Leaves opposite, shortly connate at base, crowded, triquetrous to awl-shaped, mucronate, up to ± 130 mm long, 20 mm broad, surface dark green; epidermis ± smooth, stomata hardly sunken, surface even or somewhat elevated above subhypodermal tannin idioblasts
• Flowers on pedicels with sheathing bracts in dichotomous cymes, but axillary flowers sometimes suppressed, ± 50 mm diameter, bracteate; opening from late afternoon to early evening, closing before midnight
• Sepals 5, lanceolate, 3-angled, keeled with membranous margins
• Petals in several series, linear-lanceolate, yellow, reddish on outer surface
• Stamens erect, epapillate
• Nectary a crenate ring
• Ovary conical above; placentas parietal; stigmas 5, filiform or subulate, longer than stamens
• Fruit a 5-locular capsule, close to Mitrophyllum type; with a well-developed broad spongy closing ledge; expanding keels in a more tangential position; broad, dark brown, with membranous points; covering membranes rigid; closing bodies large, somewhat trigonous
• Seeds globose, pear-shaped or triangular-ovoid
• x = 9 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

• Flowering almost any time of the year

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Tufted perennials
  • Leaves triquetrous, smooth
  • Inflorescences cymose
  • Pedicels bracteate
  • Fruit with large, white closing bodies

Nomenclature:

• Bergeranthus Schwantes
  • Schwantes: 179 (1926)
  • Herre: 90 (1971)
  • Smith et al.: 202 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 10, Eastern Cape, between Graaff-Reinet and Port Elizabeth in the west and East London and Queenstown in the east