Description:

• Dwarf shrubs, dioecious, mostly many-stemmed and often much and intricately branched, with thick woody roots
• Leaves decussate or (rarely) in whorls of 3 but often seemingly in much larger numbers at nodes, small and often ± ericoid, ± acute, acuminate to mucronate at apex; stipular sheaths (sub)sessile, small, ± cup-shaped, with or without 1(-3) minute setae on either side
• Inflorescence frequently leafy and inconspicuous, made up of subsessile, mostly 3-1-flowered cymes, arranged in pairs, or single at nodes, or flowers solitary and terminal on shoots
• Flowers subsessile, subtended by a pair of leafy bracts, 4- or 5(6)-merous
• Calyx with lobes small or subobsolete
• Male flowers: corolla with tube short, ± cylindrical to broadly funnel-shaped, lobes recurved, ± lanceolate; anthers yellowish to whitish, exserted, dangling on long, slender, filiform filaments; minute rudimentary ovary usually present
• Female flowers: corolla much smaller; tube cylindrical, lobes linear to ± lanceolate, erect to ± spreading
• Ovary 2-locular; ovule 1 per locule, erect, from base of locule; style 0; stigmas 2, long-exserted, hairy, often purplish red
• Fruit crowned by persistent calyx lobes, sometimes supported by a small ± U-shaped carpophore, dehiscent, occasionally ± inflated, or hard, indehiscent, without carpophore
• x = 11 (aneuploids)

Nomenclature:

• Nenax Gaertn.
  • Gaertner: 165 (1788)
  • Hooker: 140 (1873)
  • Schumann: 129 (1891)
  • Phillips: 736 (1951)
  • Puff: 37 (1986)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 9, endemic, S Namibia, North-West, Free State, Lesotho, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape