Lessertia stricta leaves

Lessertia stricta, in Afrikaans known as blaasertjie (blow pea), has been described as an herbaceous shrublet, growing a weak stem from a perennial rootstock.

"Herbaceous shrublet" is an oxymoron, presenting a contradiction as herbs are soft, smaller plants, while shrubs are woody and multi-stemmed, often bigger than herbs, but still smaller than trees that resemble herbs even less. The term shrublet is already an indication of lesser size than normally associated with shrub, suggesting a grey area or borderline. But if small and woody, it will be shrublet, not precocious herb. Size is not the key for distinguishing between herbs and shrubs; being woody is more important.

The plant world presents so many different solutions for challenges of vegetative life that distinct categories, as people are wont to create for better understanding, don’t always work perfectly. In biology the border areas between such artificial, man-made groupings are populated, not empty or discrete. Borderline cases, sometimes many of them, become conspicuous as exceptions, talking points, differences of opinion, causes of strife and so on.

In such circumstances it may be said, (paradoxically again) that the exceptions prove the rules: It is still useful to have rules for explaining the large amounts of information, but it has to be borne in mind that where the arbitrary line was drawn, some things will straddle the partition, falling halfway into both categories.

The leaves of L. stricta are compound, bearing oblong to narrowly elliptic leaflets in pairs, as well as a terminal leaflet (such a leaf structure is called imparipinnate). The leaves are stalked and finely hairy (Van Wyk and Malan, 1997; Wikipedia).