Description:

• Evergreen shrubs, with a woody underground caudex and woody aerial stems
• Stems upright or inclined, compressed, becoming rounded below, brittle and woody (with secondary growth), marked with leaf scars, main axes simple, sparsely branched
• Leaves sword-shaped, crowded apically, distichous, upper leaves below inflorescences broad and pale or dark red
• Inflorescence compound and capitate, with 2-flowered binate rhipidia crowded at stem apex, enclosed below by enlarged leaves, these greenish, yellow or red; binate rhipidia subtended by a short bract and opposed prophyll, 2-flowered; spathes membranous, acute; floral bracts membranous, 2-keeled, shorter than spathes
• Flowers sessile, actinomorphic, crowded, red, yellow or purplish black with pale claws, unscented, with nectar produced from septal nectaries; perianth tube cylindric, short, filled to overflowing with nectar
• Tepals linear-spathulate, much exceeding tube, unguiculate, claws linear, limbs narrowly oblong and cucullate
• Stamens: filaments flattened below, filiform above, extending well beyond tube; anthers linear, subbasifixed, connective pouched below around filament apex; pollen monosulcate, exine reticulate
• Ovary globose, domed above insertion of tepals, enclosing enlarged septal nectaries, locules 2-ovulate
• Style filiform, reaching to just below or just beyond tepal apices, shortly 3-notched apically
• Capsules fusiform, more or less woody
• Seeds tangentially compressed and shield-shaped, 1 per locule, lineolate, smooth, surface cells fusiform
• x = 16

Nomenclature:

• Klattia Baker
  • Baker: 109 (1878)
  • Goldblatt: 99 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 3, Western Cape mountains from Bain's Kloof to Riversdale, 500-1500 m, mainly damp sites in rocky sandstone soils

Additional Notes:

• The flowers are pollinated by sunbirds which feed on the ample amounts of nectar produced