Description:

• Perennial herbs or subshrubs; stems subterete, glabrous or glabrescent
• Leaves sessile, slender to filiform, rigidly mucronate, margins revolute; stipule sheath mostly tubular, truncate or sometimes with 2 small cusps
• Flowers isostylous or heterostylous; in terminal, sometimes also axillary cymes, rarely aggregated into corymbs, bracteate; bracts connate
• Calyx 4-partite almost to base; lobes triangular
• Corolla white, somewhat funnel-shaped; lobes shorter than tube, spreading, bearded on inner face to ± middle
• Stamens included in long-styled flowers, exserted in isostylous and short-styled flowers; filaments glabrous; anthers dorsifixed
• Disc cushion-shaped, farinose
• Ovary 2-locular, with fairly many ovules in each locule, attached to shortly stalked, shield-like placentas arising below middle of septum; style glabrous, included in short-styled flowers, exserted in long-styled and isostylous flowers; stigma lobes filiform, papillose
• Fruit a globose loculicidal capsule, slightly beaked
• Seeds dorsiventrally compressed, oblong, smooth, brown

Nomenclature:

• Amphiasma Bremek.
  • Bremekamp: 168 (1952)
  • Launert: 5 (1966)
  • Verdcourt: 111 (1989)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 6, tropical and southwestern part of Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 3, Namibia