Description:

• Small tufted perennials, scarcely more than 15 mm high, 30 mm wide; with slender, prostrate, rooting branches; upper parts herbaceous, papillate, possibly annual; roots tuberous
• Leaves semiterete or subtrigonous, upper surface flat, dorsally convex, ± 4 mm long, 1.5 mm in diameter; minutely textured and reddish in colour
• Flowers solitary, ± 9 mm in diameter; pedicels ± 13 mm long
• Petals few, white
• Stamens ± 25, in one series erect; staminodes 0
• Ovary partly superior, 5-celled; placentas parietal; stigmas 5, subulate
• Fruit a 5-locular capsule, small and thin, extremely fragile; valve wings reduced; covering membranes and closing bodies 0
• Seeds ellipsoid, smooth

• Flowering in summer

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Minute tufted perennials
  • Leaves with visible bladder cell idioblasts
  • Flowers solitary, white, without staminodes and with few petals

Nomenclature:

• Ectotropis N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 12 (1927)
  • Bolus: 99 (1927)
  • Hammer 96 (1997)
  • Smith et al.: 306 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 1: Ectotropis alpina N.E.Br., restricted distribution at Hogsback in the Amatola Mountains and the Katberg, Eastern Cape