What I find intriguing in this little annual, is the way the flowers open and rearrange their petals.
The flowers appear in October, are pink with a white or straw-coloured base and may be up to 2.5 cm in diameter.
The plants are up to 10 cm tall and 15 cm in diameter; the leaves are club-shaped, bright green but turning reddish when the flowers start appearing.
In the Tanqua Karoo and Little Karoo the species is locally abundant in disturbed places (usually in quartz).
In suitable climates, this robust shrub with its beautiful flowers would make a nice garden plant. In nature, the species is found on sandstone outcrops and in sandy soils on rocky slopes, from Hondeklipbaai to Lambert’s Bay and inland as far as Worcester.
The plants are sparsely branched, usually erect (up to 50 cm tall), but sometimes creeping. They have triangular to almost cylindrical leaves, 2-4 cm long and 0.5-0.6 cm in diameter.
The flowers have long stalks and are mostly solitary; they are up to 7 cm in diameter, usually white but sometimes pink or magenta, without staminodes; they appear in June-November.
A peculiar species indeed and therefore easy to recognise.
The plants are up to 5 cm tall, usually with up to 3 branches. They form two types of leaf pairs: in the first one the leaves are flat and largely free. In the second pair they are upright and fused for more than half their length; this pair becomes dry and papery in summer, so that the new growth is protected from drying out.
The flowers very large (up to 6 cm in diameter) and appear in Aug.-Sept.
Found on shale flats and gneiss slopes in northern Namaqualand (from Springbok to north and west of Steinkopf), an area with 100-200 mm rainfall per year (in winter).
This is one of the more easily recognized mesembs, only known from the Prince Albert area, where it occurs on flats and hills with broken dolerite and quartz gravel.
The old name Bijlia cana cannot be used anymore; vernacular names are Prince Albert vygie, pangavygie and skewevygie.
The plants grow in small clumps of smooth and hard, boat-like but very asymmetric leaves, which are almost as broad as thick in the upper half and pale greyish green to pinkish/yellowish white.
In July-August they produce bright yellow or orange-yellow, short-stalked flowers to about 3.5 cm in diameter.
There is only a single species in the genus Vanzijlia, occurring in sand along the west coast, from Saldanha to Hondeklipbay and inland towards Clanwilliam on loam.
The plants form small tangled shrubs, with branches creeping or growing upwards into other shrubs. They have dimorphic leaf pairs:
– a smaller, nearly completely fused pair which is oblong or spherical, with or without small free points to the leaves
– a larger pair in which the leaves are more or less cylindrical or semi-cylindrical and only fused at the base (often inflated there).
The pale pink to white flowers are solitary, 2.5 to 6 cm in diameter and appear in late autumn to winter (May-September). After pollination they develop into capsules with 9 or 10 compartments.
Stomatium is one of the few genera of the Aizoaceae with obviously scented flowers. This species even derives its name from that fact (suaveolens = with a sweet smell).
The plants form compact, flat to somewhat rounded clumps with rough leaves which are 1-2 cm long, 0.9-1.5 cm wide and 0.7-0.9 cm thick.
Usually the yellow flowers appear in May-July; they are to 1.5 cm in diameter and open in the evening.
The species occurs on flat rock slabs (see first picture) in the Fraserburg – Sutherland – Williston area, where severe frost is a normal phenomenon in winter.
In the second picture you may also spot Crassula corallina.
Only three species of Cephalophyllum are known to occur in the Little Karoo and this is one of them; it also occurs somewhat more to the west, in the Worcester-Robertson Karoo. The other two are C. curtophyllum and C. purpureo-album.
With their short thick stems, the plants are rather more compact than most other Cephalophyllums. They form clumps up to 15 cm in diameter, the centres of which die off with age.
The dark green leaves are 5.5-8 cm long, triangular with a sharp point (subulatoides means awl-shaped).
In July-August the plants are decorated with magenta flowers about 3 cm in diameter. The staminodes are white.
The fruits are persistent; they have a rounded base and about 12 compartments.
Whereas nearly all species of Stomatium have yellow flowers, here – as the name implies- the flowers are white to pink. They are about 2.5 cm across and heavily scented; they begin to open only near sunset. The flowering period is stated as August to December.
The plants vary from compact and somewhat dome-shaped to flattish and forming mats up to 8 cm in diameter with age.
The leaves are spoon-shaped to trigonous, 2-2.5 long, about 1 cm long and about 0.7 cm thick; they have an inconspicuous keel, wavy margins with 3-6 small white, teeth-like warts and a very rough skin.
Occurring on sandy flats or pans with a high content of lime in Namaqualand and southwestern Bushmanland.
Plants of this species are the largest in the genus and are sometimes nicknamed “elephant’s toilet paper” because of the enormous leaves. As a rule, they occur on sandy plains in southwestern Namibia and northwestern Namaqualand.
Although their lifespan is usually not more than two years, they may reach a height of 1.5 m.
At first, the plant forms a rosette of leaves with flowering side branches, after which the internodes in the rosette elongate and form new rosettes and flowering branches.
Usually the stems are clearly 4-angled and winged, up to as much as 4 cm in diameter.
The leaves are egg-shaped to triangular, with more or less undulating margins; they are very large (lower ones up to 40 x 25 cm), with small bladder-cells.
Flowers appear in Sept.-Nov.; they are 4-6 cm across, pink to pale pink, with a white or slightly green base and very numerous petals, staminodes and stamens. The fruits have 5 compartments.
As this species is easy to grow, it is often encountered in cultivation. In nature it is restricted to a narrow band along the northern foothills of the Langeberg Mountains, where it is locally abundant in shallow clayey soil rich in quartzite pebbles.
The plants form tufts -often 5 to 10 cm across- of densely crowded leaves, with rather sharp edges and convex sides. They are firm to the touch and greyish to greenish in colour.
In Aug.-Oct. they produce dark pink to light purple flowers, about 1.5 cm in diameter.
