Description:

• Compact to mat-forming dwarf perennials; rootstock thickened or not, bearing ± horizontal branches with internodes mostly reduced and hidden or elongated up to 40 mm, with adventitious roots at nodes; ± anisophyllous
• Leaves opposite, with 2 (3, in cultivation up to 4) new leaf pairs per branch, per season; connate at base, triquetrous distally with acuminate tips, semiterete basally and broader than thick, dark green or glaucous; subepidermal enlarged tanniniferous cells (pellucid dots) concentrated along keel and margins
• Flowers solitary, pedicellate; opening in sunlight or in afternoon (C. carolinensis)
• Sepals 5 or 6
• Petals in 2-4 series, white to deep magenta, with shades of pink
• Stamens: filaments variable in colour and length; staminodes white to purple, forming a distinct cone in newly opened flowers, spreading and bending backwards in time
• Nectary: glands forming a dark green crenate ring
• Ovary with upper surface convex or centrally depressed; placentas parietal; stigmas (4)5-11, sometimes longer than filaments
• Fruit a (4)5-11-locular capsule, reddish when young, dark brown later; pedicel persistent or breaking off, resulting in a tumble fruit; valves without wings but with enlarged rims; bases of expanding keels widely separated; covering membranes complete, rather firm, filled ± with a whitish spongy tissue, with low rims at distal ends; closing device at distal rim of capsule reduced to a tiny bud or knob formed by placenta or by an outgrowth of expanding sheet over some protrusion from endocarp
• Seeds ± 1 mm long; micropylar end curved and elongated or short and straight

• Flowering in summer

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Perennials tufted with tuberous roots, often trailing and rooting at the nodes
  • Flowers solitary

Nomenclature:

• Khadia N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 279 (1930)
  • Herre: 188 (1971)
  • Chesselet & Hartmann: 46 (1995)
  • Chesselet, Hartmann, Hahn, Burgoyne & Smith: 25 (1998)
  • Smith et al.: 218 (1998)
  • Winter & Hahn: 16 (1999)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 6, North-West, Gauteng and Mpumalanga, extending into N KwaZulu-Natal