Description:

• Shrubs, shrublets or perennial herbs, often with annual branches, decumbent or prostrate, rarely scrambling; stems sometimes reddish, with peeling bark when older; rootstock sometimes tuberous and lower roots sometimes with multiple small tubers
• Leaves opposite, sessile, slightly connate or free, sometimes hairy or prickly, usually with visible bladder cell idioblasts, variable in shape from broadly triangular to cylindrical, mostly semiterete with a concave upper side, rarely flat; from bluish green to yellowish green or reddish, usually soft
• Flowers solitary or in 3-flowered dichasial inflorescences; pedicels variable in length; bracts small or foliaceous
• Sepals 5, unequal, sometimes horn- or tail-like
• Petals in 1-4 whorls, linear, obtuse or emarginate, rarely hairy, white to pink or purple, rarely yellow, salmon, orange, rust-red, scarlet, carmine or wine-coloured
• Stamens erect; staminodes usually arranged in a cone, whitish, sometimes hairy
• Nectary of 5 separate glands, rarely united into a ring
• Ovary slightly convex or concave on top; placentas parietal; stigmas (4)5(6), subulate or caudate, papillate
• Fruit a (4)5(6)-locular capsule of Delosperma type; expanding keels parallel; valve wings ± rectangular; covering membranes mostly 0; closing bodies 0
• Seeds globose, pale brown, smooth to slightly textured
• x = 9 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

• Flowering spring to summer, or sporadically

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Creeping or shrubby perennials
  • Leaves soft, glistening or hairy
  • Fruit without covering membranes

Classification Notes:

• A very heterogeneous genus in need of revision

Nomenclature:

• Delosperma N.E.Br. emend. Lavis
  • Brown: 412 (1925)
  • Brown: 433 (1925)
  • Lavis: 209 (1966)
  • Friedrich: 34 (1970)
  • Herre: 126 (1971)
  • Smith et al.: 292 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 163, mostly in South Africa. It also occurs in Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana and further north to E Africa through Zimbabwe, Kenya and Tanzania to Ethiopia as well as Arabia and the Yemen. The Indian Ocean islands of Madagascar and Reunion also have a few indigenous species
• Southern Africa: Widespread in all the provinces except the climatically severe central Northern Cape