Description:

• Compact, small to medium-sized shrublets, with erect or somewhat spreading, woody branches
• Leaves greenish grey to silvery, strongly compressed lengthwise and keeled on back; leaf margins not very sharp, often with a reddish tinge in full sun; leaf surfaces rough to the touch
• Flowers in long, flattened and long-lived inflorescences, faintly scented
• Sepals 5, unequal
• Petals almost white to light or distinctly pink
• Nectary a crenulate ring, or of 5 separate, crenulate glands
• Ovary with basal-parietal placentas
• Fruit a 6-locular capsule, of Delosperma type; whitish; expanding keels parallel, yellowish; valve wings large; covering membranes 0; closing bodies 0
• Seeds medium-sized, pear-shaped, rather glossy

• Flowering during late winter and early spring

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Compact shrublets
  • Leaves greenish grey to silvery green, laterally flattened, sometimes rough, shrinking unevenly when dehydrated, leaf margins reddish purple
  • Pedicel strongly flattened

Nomenclature:

• Hartmanthus S.A.Hammer
  • Hammer: 77 (1995)
  • Smith et al.: 282 (1998)
• Delosperma N.E.Br. emend. Lavis in part

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 2, in very arid regions in the northern Richtersveld, Northern Cape, and in the Sperrgebiet in S Namibia