Description:

• Solitary succulents or forming small clumps up to 0.3 m tall, branching from base
• Stems 1-many, decumbent to erect, cylindrical to clavate; tubercles mostly < 3 mm long, flattened, rounded, polygonal, covering stem and arranged roughly into 10-19 rows along stem, each tipped with small conical to dorsiventrally flattened persistent leaf < 1 mm long, usually sunken into depression near apex
• Inflorescence glabrous, 1-30 per stem, arising all over stems though usually concentrated towards apex (rarely basal only), bearing 1-6(-15) flowers, forming peduncular patches with many narrowly deltoid bracts (often with lateral teeth near base) and basal bract seated on tubercle like those on stem; pedicel 0.5-3 mm long
• Sepals 1.5-2.5 mm long, overlapping slightly at bases, occasionally with ciliate margins
• Corolla shallowly campanulate, rotate or with strongly reflexed lobes, (5-)7-16 mm diam., deeply lobed; outside glabrous and smooth; inside glabrous, smooth to papillate, papillae dome-like to obtusely conical and usually tipped with a short apical hair; tube mostly shallow, up to 3 mm deep; lobes spreading, 3-6 mm long, ovate-deltoid to lanceolate, margins reflexed so convex above, eciliate
• Corona 1.5-3 × 2-6 mm, 2-seriate, arising from staminal column, glabrous, ± sessile at base of corolla tube; outer lobes erect, emarginate to deeply bifid into usually ascending lobules, laterally fused with bases of inner lobes and forming small pouch, dorsiventrally flattened and often channelled down inner surface; inner lobes adpressed to backs of anthers for most of anthers' length, sometimes exceeding them and rising up in centre in small column, dorsiventrally flattened, with dorsal process fused into cup with outer lobes or forming discrete, spreading, obtuse lobule in series with outer lobules
• Anthers 2-locular, horizontal above style head, margins shrinking and exposing pollinia, rectangular
• Pollinia D-shaped, longer than broad, pellucid margin twisting from outer edge onto dorsal surface
• Follicles terete-fusiform obclavate, glabrous, smooth

Nomenclature:

• Lavrania Plowes
  • Plowes: 123 (1986)
  • Bruyns: 240 (1993)
• Leachia Plowes
  • Plowes: 11 (1992a) name illegitimate
• Leachiella Plowes
  • Plowes: 15 (1992b) name illegitimate
• Larryleachia Plowes
  • Plowes: 5 (1996)
  • Bruyns: 305 (1999)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 5, in very arid western parts, Namibia and Northern Cape