Description:

• Annual prostrate to erect herbs, with prominent, soft papillae
• Leaves opposite, ± spatulate, entire or occasionally pinnatifid
• Flowers solitary, terminal, pedicellate, ebracteate, small or large; opening during day, or cleistogamous
• Sepals 5, papillate
• Petals 1- to 3-seriate, few (± 20) and short (2-4 mm long) or many and long, yellow or white
• Stamens relatively few; staminodes 6 to many
• Nectary of 5 separate dark green glands
• Ovary convex above with 5 prominent ridges; placentas parietal; stigmas 5(6), filiform to narrowly subulate
• Fruit a 5(6)-locular capsule, close to Mitrophyllum type; upper part of capsule distinctly ridged; with large expanding sheets; expanding keels parallel, large; valve wings broad; covering membranes small or 0; closing bodies 0
• Seeds obtusely triangular, compressed, minutely tuberculate or smooth

• Flowering from late winter to spring

• Distinguishing characters:
  • Annual herbs with flat leaves
  • Flowers white or yellow, sometimes cleistogamous
  • Fruit: upper surface ridged

Nomenclature:

• Cleretum N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 412 (1925)
  • Friedrich: 26 (1970)
  • Ihlenfeldt & Struck: 411 (1986)
  • Smith et al.: 66 (1998)
• Micropterum Schwantes
  • Schwantes: 17 (1928)
  • Winkler: 20 (1957)
  • Herre: 210 (1971)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 3, western parts of South Africa, from the Cape Peninsula in the Western Cape, northwards through Namaqualand to the Richtersveld in the Northern Cape