Description:

• Robust trailing perennials, forming large mats; stems maroon to yellow, sometimes narrowly winged, with ± upright flowering branches
• Leaves opposite, slightly united at base, sharply 3-angled, up to 150 mm long, green or grey-green, often tinged with a reddish hue, margins and keel cartilaginous and often serrate
• Flowers large, up to 150 mm diameter, terminal, pedicellate, borne on bracteate stalks; base of flower two-ridged tapering into flower stalk; opening in morning and closing at night
• Sepals 5, equal or unequal
• Petals free, white, yellow or various shades of purple or pink
• Stamens many
• Nectary a crenulate ring
• Ovary: placentas parietal; stigmas 4-20, radiating, plumose
• Fruit fleshy-succulent, indehiscent, 4-20-locular, often edible
• Seeds large, obovoid, slightly compressed, on long funicles, embedded in a sticky mucilage
• x = 9

• Flowering from early spring to summer

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Robust perennials, trailing
  • Leaves triquetrous, smooth, long
  • Flowers large, up to 150 mm in diameter
  • Fruit fleshy, seeds embedded in mucilage

Nomenclature:

• Carpobrotus N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 433 (1925)
  • Herre: 102 (1971)
  • Wisura & Glen: 76 (1993)
  • Smith et al.: 252 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 13
• Southern Africa: Species 7, along the coast at low altitudes, with few species found inland.
  • Species of Carpobrotus are cultivated and have been introduced worldwide into areas with suitable climates; in some parts of the United States of America they have escaped cultivation and are invading natural vegetation types