Old plants of this species form clumps with up to 20 egg-shaped (=oviform) bodies, which are 1-2 cm tall and 1-3 cm in diameter.
Especially when flowering, the very dense stands in which they grow present an unbelievable show. The white to rose-pink flowers appear in August-September.
The plants occur on quartzitic flats and slopes in the southern Knersvlakte, where the rainfall is on average about 125 mm per year (mainly in winter).
In her book “Namaqualand in flower” (1972), Sima Eliovson referred to this species as follows:
“Quite the most outstanding Pelargonium in Namaqualand, this has thick clusters of brilliant cerise-purple flowers that grow beside the brightest annuals and can be spotted from afar. They generally lie scattered in little clearings among orange daisies in the fields around Springbok amd Kamieskroon, where they are plentiful.”
Charles Craib in his beautiful and interesting book “Geophytic Pelargoniums” (2001), calls the species “one of South Africa’s most spectacular flowering plants.”
The plants are tuberous geophytes occurring in a narrow strip along South Africa’s west coast, from near the northern part of the Richtersveld to the Nardouw flats in the south.
Although the summers are very hot here, in winter it may be freezing cold.
The rainfall varies between 150 and 300 mm per year, mainly in winter.
When in flower, the plants are 20 to 30 cm tall. The flowers appear from August to October, usually with 20-40 (sometimes as many as 60) together in a large cluster on a single stalk. They show a wide range of colours, from red and pinkish purple to mauve, pale lilac and even nearly white.
It’s a bit of a pity that the former genus name has been dropped, as it aptly suggested the way in which the persistent old, dry leaves form a sceleton protecting the new leaves.
The creeping or scrambling plants have imbricate leaves (overlapping like the tiles of a roof); which are to 4 cm long and 2 cm wide, with the tips turned inwards.
The flowers are white to pale yellow, pale salmon or pale pink, about 2-3 cm in diameter; they have a short stalk and appear in July-October.
It is a widespread species, occurring under bushes or in the open from Namaqualand to Montagu and Aberdeen in both winter and summer rainfall areas; often on quartz.
As in other members of the genus, the plants contain the alkaloid mesembrymine and have medicinal properties. The fermented leaves are widely used as a sedative and to relieve pain such as toothache and stomach ache. The concoction can also cause drunkenness.
I suppose that few people will get excited about a Cephalophyllum without flowers, but when flowers are present, it is quite a different story. In this case, the flowers are up to 5 cm in diameter, with yellow petals and orange stamens with brownish to purple tips. They appear from June through September.
The plants are to a meter in diameter and have a very compact centre and creeping branches. The leaves are rather long (8-12 cm) and round with trigonous tips; dark green to greyish.
The fruits have stalks that don’t last very long and are classified as tumble fruits.
The species occurs in dry fynbos and low open karroid bush on sandy to loamy soils from the Knersvlakte to Nieuwoudtville and Clanwilliam. Most of the rainfall occurs in winter (100-200 mm per year).
Because the plants can quickly colonize a site, it can be a very useful species, but unfortunately it is reluctant to flower in cultivation.
Attractive dwarf shrublets up to 15 cm tall with a caudiciform base up to 3.5 cm in diameter.
Branches are short and fat, with peeling yellow-brown bark; covered with flat white phyllopodia (leaf-bases) when young. The leaves are usually up to 4 cm long and 5-7 mm wide.
The flowers are tubular, erectly spreading to pendulous and relatively large (up to 1.8 cm long). They appear in November and December.
This species is widely distributed from southwest Namibia to the Knersvlakte, on flats and stony slopes, often with quartz rocks or pebbles.
Rainfall in the area is 100-200 mm per year, mainly in winter. The temperatures are high in summer and moderate in winter, sometimes with light frost.
Comparing the first three pictures (taken in the wild) to the fourth (taken in cultivation), it may be hard to believe that they represent the same species.
The plants occur in quartz gravel on hillocks on the southwestern Knersvlakte.
They are geophytes, with a tuber up to 1.5 cm tall and 2 cm wide and 8-14 leaves, which are about 5 mm wide and die back at flowering.
The inflorescence is to 15 cm tall, with about 10 flowers, appearing in late spring / early summer (October-November).
As the first picture shows, these up to 2m tall, dense clumps are very conspicuous in the field.
The branches are yellowish-green to grey-green, usually up to 3 cm thick at the base and 1.2 cm in diameter above, with leaves that soon disappear.
Between July to September one can find the plants in flower.
The plants occur mainly in flat open gravelly or sandy plains, sometimes on low stony slopes. They are widely distributed from the Haalenberg east of Luederitz in Namibia to Kamieskroon in Namaqualand and Namies in Bushmanland.
One of the many older names for this plant is Mesembryanthemum cigarettiferum.
Gustav Schwantes in his magnum opus “Flowering stones and Midday-Flowers” (1957) gives a wonderful description of the species, referring to that name as follows:
“…It was a small, tufted, branched plant, on which were a number of cylindrical structures with dry skins like paper bags; from each of them projected the tip of a pair of leaves at rest within. These paper bags were formed by the drying up of earlier leaf pairs which had been joined for a long way up. The young pair of leaves inside them was. however, much more deeply divided. The surrounding bags reminded Berger so strongly of the paper mouthpiece of a cigarette that he gave it the very descriptive name of Mesembryanthemum cigarettiferum, the Mesembryanthemum bearing cigarettes. The leaves at rest within the bags, when the plants had been potted up and started into growth, grew out of the bags and developed into thick, narrow leaves such as are often found in the Mesembryanthemaceae and produced from the centre an equally narrow pair of leaves, which, however, were joined for a considerable distance so that only the extreme ends of the leaves appeared as free tips. Within this pair of leaves, which looks like a cylinder with little horns at the top, the young, but deeply divided, pair develops; it draws on the pair surrounding it so that this finally becomes the protecting skin, the paper bags referred to above. Clearly this is a case of one of the many interesting contrivances for protecting the young growth from the rigors of the dry period. This protection is achieved here in the same way as in Ruschia pygmaea (see picture #2, FN) and many other species of Mesembryanthemaceae.”
The plants form compact clumps with many branches, up to 20 cm in diameter, with
light blue-grey to green-grey leaves.
The flowers appear from July to October and are about 4.5 cm in diameter; they open in the early afternoon.
Widespread on shale slopes and flats at an altitude of 300-950m from Namaqualand to the western Little Karoo and the only Cheiridopsis that occurs this far south.
Pictures taken near Matjiesfontein on the following dates:
#1 31 Jan. 2009
#2 18 Feb. 2007
#3 and #4 17 May 2008
Subspecies namaquensis differs from its sibling by having no more than two leaves, one of which is usually inconspicuous.
The inflorescence is shorter (5-10 cm tall) and always single and the filaments have a double tuft of hairs.
These plants occur only in the Northern Cape, from Springbok to the Richtersveld in gravelly places.
One often comes across the name of the species as Bulbine mesembryanthemoides, but because Haworth used the spelling mesembryanthoides in his original description, this has to be accepted as correct.
Subspecies mesembryanthoides has a small underground tuber and usually 1-2
leaves (rarely up to 4). The leaves are cylindrical, 1-2.5 cm tall and up to 2 cm in diameter. As soon as the dry summer period arrives, they start to whither.
Flowers appear in spring and summer (Augustus-November), usually after the leaves have retracted. Each plant may have 1-3 inflorescences up to 20 cm tall.
This subspecies occurs widespread from the Knersvlakte in southern Namaqualand to Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape on rocky slopes and flats.
