Retzia capensis Thunb.

An erect, rigidly branched shrub about 2-4 ft., rarely 6 ft. high. Branches densely villous when young, glabrescent with age as the leaves fall. Leaves, the lower ones green, orange-tipped; the younger ones progressively more orange, densely crowded, verticillate, sessile, 3.5-6 cm long, about 3 mm. broad about the middle, linear-lanceolate, acute or subacute, spreading erect and slightly incurved, villous and ciliate towards the base, glabrescent above; the margins strongly recurved and with the broadly prominent midrib below forming two villous tubular cavities along the lower surface. Bracts below the flowers leaf-like but broader towards the base than the leaves and more villous; Bracteoles subtending each flower about 2.5-3 cm long, more delicate than bracts, villous. Flowers several together, densely clustered on abbreviated shoots, opening one or two at a time, sessile, erect. Calyx about 2-5 cm long, with unequal villous linear-lanceolate lobes; tube cylindric, about 1 cm long. Corolla tubular, with the tubular part reddish-orange on the outer surface, paler on the inner and with the lobes dark purple, with a dense tuft of white hairs obscuring the tips, about 4-5 cm long, 6-7 mm. in diameter; tube about 35-4 cm long, ribbed from the sinuses; lobes 5 (said rarely to be 6-7) about 1 cm long. Stamens as many as and shorter than the corolla-lobes, inserted at the tops of the corolla-tube near the sinuses; filaments short; anthers sagittate half their length, versatile. Disc small. Ovary incompletely 2-chambered, ovate-acuminate; style becoming filiform; stigma scarcely dilated, shortly 2-lobed; ovules 4, 2 on each side of the placenta, one of each directed upwards and one downwards; placenta extending half the length of the ovary from the base and incompletely septate in the upper half; the upper portion elongating more than the lower with age.