Description:

• Prostrate perennials forming dense mats, rooting at nodes, with internodes 20-30 mm long
• Leaves opposite, triquetrous, semiterete and sometimes minutely fringed at base, in small rosettes at nodes, hyaline-dotted seen against light, up to ± 30 mm long, bright green, later becoming reddish or yellowish
• Flowers 1-3, terminal, rarely 2 or 3 in dichasia on tufted, short side branches; ± 40 mm in diameter; pedicels up to ± 30 mm long, ebracteate; opening at noon, closing by evening
• Sepals 5, unequal, inner ones with membranous margins
• Petals ± 2-seriate, linear, obtuse, free; white, pink to purple
• Stamens with inner ones papillate at base; staminodes 0
• Nectary a deeply crenulate ring
• Ovary convex at top; placentas parietal; stigmas 5, subulate, plumose, up to ± 4 mm long
• Fruit a 5-locular capsule, near Mitrophyllum type; pale yellow, spongy; valves becoming reflexed; closing bodies large, bifid, spongy, rarely 0; expanding keels diverging, with lacerate margins; valve wings ± oblong, as long as valves; covering membranes present
• Seeds ± ovoid
• x = 9 (polyploidy)

• Flowering winter to early spring

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Mat-forming perennials
  • Fruit spongy, closing bodies bilobed

Nomenclature:

• Disphyma N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 433 (1925)
  • Herre: 136 (1971)
  • Chinnock: 331 (1971)
  • Chinnock: 77 (1986)
  • Chinnock: 59 (1996)
  • Smith et al.: 260 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 4, South Africa, Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand
• Southern Africa: Species 2, coastal belt in the Western and Eastern Cape