Source:
SSA
Description:
Shrublet, much branched; branchlets softly pilose, subherbaceous, leafy. Leaves alternate and scarcely opposite, ovate- or rotund-deltoid, dentate or incised, petiolate. Flowers solitary, axillary, pedicellate, ebracteate, yellow, sometimes white or cream. Calyx 5-lobed almost to base, villous; segments somewhat unequal, lanceolate to elliptic, slightly imbricate. Corolla campanulate, 5-lobed; tube of medium length, broad, somewhat declinate at base, slightly incurved and ascending, nearly erect, with 2 gibbosities or short pouches in front, lined with oil-secreting trichomes; lobes broad, spreading, nearly equal, shorter than tube; upper 2 exterior in bud. Stamens 4, didynamous, declinate; filaments arising at base of corolla tube, short, thick, terete, incurved, glandular; anthers at length unithecate by confluence of 2 diverging thecae; staminode 1. Ovary ovoid, bilocular; ovules many; style short, thick, terete; stigma truncate or emarginate, thinly stigmatose. Fruit an ovoid, acuminate, bilocular, septicidal capsule; valves 2, coriaceous, bifid. Seeds many, black, oblong, furrowed, oblique at one end, with white aril at the other; testa adpressed, granular-rugose. x = 10 (1 report, polyploidy).
Distribution:
Monotypic: Colpias mollis E.Mey. ex Benth., Northern Cape (Richtersveld to Calvinia); in rock crevices in sheltered kloofs. Pollinated by oil-collecting bees.
Classification:
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