Aptosimum
Source:
SSA
Synonym(s):
Chilostigma Hochst.: 372 (1841a). Ohlendorffia Lehm.: 7 (1835).
Description:
Perennial undershrubs but sometimes flowering in herbaceous state, low, with or without elongated and often procumbent branches, sometimes cushion-forming or tufted, mostly woody at base. Leaves alternate, usually densely crowded on long or short shoots, linear, lanceolate, elongated or spathulate, entire, 1-nerved, midrib sometimes persistent and spinescent. Flowers solitary in leaf axils or in short axillary cymes, sessile or subsessile, bibracteolate, dark blue to violet. Calyx tubular, 5-lobed to various depths; tube campanulate; lobes linear to deltoid or ovate, +/- valvate in bud. Corolla tubular, slightly irregular, 5-lobed; tube elongated, much longer than calyx, widening suddenly above short, narrow base into a long throat, mouth wide; limb patent, much shorter than tube, oblique; lobes free, rounded, +/- equal, 2 posterior outside in bud. Stamens 4, didynamous, included, arising in lower part of corolla tube; filaments filiform; anthers of shorter, posterior pair smaller than those of longer, anterior pair and sometimes sterile, anthers bithecate, transverse, ciliate-hispid; thecae confluent so dehiscing along a single transverse line. Nectary usually saucer-shaped. Ovary bilocular; ovules many; style filiform, exceeding stamens; stigma small, obscurely bidentate, emarginate or subcapitate. Fruit a thick-walled capsule, obovoid, +/- globose, broadly ovoid or ovoid, upper part compressed at right angles to septum, emarginate, septicidal but opening only at top, often persistent; valves usually bifid. Seeds many, obovoid or flattened-globose; testa adpressedly reticulate.
Distribution:
Native to sthn and tropical Africa, species +/- 40; +/- 19 in sthn Afr., widespread but mostly in western, dry regions; not in Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal or Lesotho. See note under Peliostomum.