Description:

• Shrubs or shrublets, completely glabrous, sympodially branched, lateral vegetative branches forming short shoots; balsamic-resinous, aromatic; plants dioecious
• Leaves opposite-decussate, small, with broad, sheathing bases, articulated to short petiole, able to survive strong desiccation; blade folded fan-wise, obtriangular-obovate, distally dentate, with palmate-flabellate venation; stipules paired, lateral, subspinous, adnate to and persistent with petioles
• Inflorescences catkin-like, erect, terminal on short-shoots, with or without a terminal flower, flowers (or flower triads at base of inflorescence) opposite and subtended by foliose or bracteose, cucullate bracts, sometimes interpreted as tepals (Kubitzki 1993)
• Flowers unisexual, regular, hypogynous, sessile, bibracteolate, wind-pollinated
• Sepals 0
• Petals 0
• Male flowers with (3-)5(-8) stamens; filaments connate at base into a central column; anthers basifixed, 2-thecous, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, their connective prolonged into a short beak; pollen dispersed as tetrads; without rudimentary ovary
• Female flowers with gynoecium of (2)3 or 4 ± fused carpels, superior, sessile, (2)3- or 4-locular and (lobed; carpels ± free above; ovules many, in 2 rows on inner angles of locules, on central-axile placenta, anatropous, bitegmic and crassinucellar; styles 3 or 4, recurved; stigmas ventrally decurrent, with crinkled margins; staminodes 0
• Fruit dry, a small capsule, ventricidally dehiscent
• Seeds many, minute, pendulous, ovoid, with thin, reticulate testa; endosperm copious and oily; embryo minute
• x = 10 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Myrothamnus Welw.
  • Welwitsch: 578 (1859a)
  • Welwitsch: 150 (1859b)
  • Welwitsch: 22 (1869)
  • Oliver: 403 (1871)
  • Niedenzu: 262 (1928)
  • Weimarck: 451 (1936)
  • Friedrich-Holzhammer: 1 (1966)
  • Mendes: 69 (1978)
  • Bywater: 1 (1984)
  • Dahlgren & Van Wyk: 13 (1988)
  • Kubitzki: 469 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 2
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Myrothamnus flabellifolius Welw., a resurrection plant rapidly reviving after rain when the folded, blackish, fragile leaves green up (Mabberley 1997), Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland and N KwaZulu-Natal
  • Myrothamnus moschatus (Baill.) Baill. recorded from Madagascar