Description:

• Densely branched shrubs up to 1 m high, with large, tuberous storage roots; branchlets minutely papillose, becoming pallid and slightly rough when dry; inflorescences persisting and becoming subspinose
• Leaves opposite, free, trigonous to subterete; papulose when young, tufted in axils of old leaves, often leaving tooth-like projection on falling
• Flowers small, pedicellate, in very rich dichasia
• Sepals 5
• Petals 1-seriate, linear, yellow, orange, salmon, or pink to purple, rarely white
• Stamens many, inner ones papillate; staminodes conically collected
• Nectary a crenulate ring
• Ovary semi-inferior, conical or convex; placentas parietal; stigmas 5, erect, subulate
• Fruit a 5-locular capsule, of Drosanthemum type; small, valves recurved when expanded; expanding keels contiguous and diverging towards tips, with narrow, membranous, acute wings; covering membranes present, but sometimes reduced by half; closing bodies 0
• Seeds ovoid, smooth, brown

• Flowering spring to mid-summer

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Densely branched shrubs, with tuberous roots
  • Flowers often in coppery shades, without filamentous staminodes
  • Fruit with covering membranes which may be reduced

Nomenclature:

• Mestoklema N.E.Br. ex Glen
  • Brown: 164 (1936)
  • Friedrich: 87 (1970)
  • Herre: 206 (1971)
  • Glen: 454 (1981)
  • Smith et al.: 308 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 6, Namibia and South Africa and is widely distributed in a broad north-south band in South Africa, stretching southward from the central North-West through the Free State and Northern Cape to the coast of the Eastern and Western Cape. It extends into the Little Karoo in the west and occurs at two outlying localities in eastern and central Namibia