Description:

• Woody shrublets, cushion-forming or up to 500 mm high, often with markedly different long shoots and dense shorter shoots with narrow rings left by scars of past leaf pairs
• Leaves papillate, of two types: first type of leaf pair united except for central aperture, small, forming a globose or elliptic body; second type arising from within aperture, oblong-terete, connate for half its length, base changing into a dry sheath
• Flowers solitary, terminal, in position of a long leaf pair, i.e. base often enclosed by short leaf pair forming a cup; opening either in morning or at midday, remaining permanently open after a few days
• Sepals 4 or 5, unequal
• Petals free, filiform, vivid magenta or white, turning rosy pink
• Stamens erect; staminodes present
• Nectary a crested ring
• Ovary: placentas parietal; stigmas (4)5(6-9), minute, subulate
• Fruit a (4)5(6-9)-locular capsule, of Mitrophyllum type; flat with high rims on the valves; closing bodies 0; expanding sheets merging into prominent, contiguous expanding keels, with broad, membranous margins; covering membranes membranous
• Seeds globose, light brown, shiny
• x = 9 (polyploidy)

• Flowering late winter to spring

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Shrublets with two different kinds of leaf pairs and woody, hard, thin stems
  • Resting leaf bodies inconspicuous

Nomenclature:

• Dicrocaulon N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 141 (1928)
  • Herre: 128 (1971)
  • Ihlenfeldt, Hartmann & Poppendieck: 171 (1978)
  • Smith et al.: 234 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 7, Namaqualand, straddling the border between the Northern and Western Cape