Triumfetta welwitschii Mast.

Shrub with 1–many annual shoots 6–60 cm tall springing from a vertical perennial woody rootstock 0.5–2 cm thick and blood-red when cut; stems clothed at base in grey triangular scale-leaves (± 2 mm long and broad), brown, 0.1–1 mm wide, glabrous, scabrid or softly hairy with short and/or long, white, yellowish or reddish stellate and/or simple hairs.. Leaves often absent at anthesis, linear to elliptic, 3.5–10 cm long, 0.7–5 cm wide, apex truncate, obtuse or acute, base cuneate, serrate but sometimes only at the tip, leathery, glabrous to stellate-scabrid or softly hairy above and beneath; petiole 2(–5) mm long, hairy, with 2 pairs of glands towards the apex at the sides; glands globose to shortly cylindical, 0.5–0.7 mm long, inconspicuous in some (?young) leaves; stipules filiform to narrowly triangular, 5–11 mm long, 0.5(–2) mm wide, glabrous, brown, membranous.. Inflorescence terminal, highly branched, often produced before the leaves expand, branches from the axils of highly reduced and inconspicuous reduced leaves 3–10 mm long, ± 1.5 mm wide, each bearing 1–8 pairs of globose-cylindrical glands 0.5–0.75 mm long; branches up to 16 cm long, each bearing 1–numerous 1–5-flowered cymes; bracts as stipules, 5–6 mm long; pedicels 6–8 mm long.. Sepals ± oblong, 8–10 mm long, 1–1.5(–2.5) mm wide, yellow to grey, densely stellate-hairy (hairs long or short); apical spine 0.25–0.5 mm long, glabrous.. Petals spathulate, without a distinct claw, 7–8 mm long, 3.5–5 mm wide, base with a few scattered hairs; stamens 28–34.. Fruits indehiscent, spherical, 20–30 mm diameter including bristles, fruit body globose, ± 5 mm diameter hidden by the 95–130 thin, flexuous, reddish bristles, each 8–14 mm long and densely covered at the base with white or yellowish hairs 0.5 mm long (hairs more thinly scattered along the length of the bristles), the tip capped with 1–4 straight hairs.