Lobostemon echioides

Lobostemon echioides is a blue-flowered shrub of up to 1 m that resprouts after fire. The alternate, grey leaves are covered in soft, silvery hairs. The leaf shape is elliptic to oblong.

Flowers are born in branched, cymous inflorescences at stem tips in spring and summer. The five petals spread in a salver-shape to 1 cm in diameter, with slightly irregular and wavy margins. The five reddish purple stamens are tall above the corolla, tipped with tiny, white, globose anthers.

At the base of the stamen a curious protrusion is attached to the filament: a staminal scale, triangular in shape with hairy lateral lobes. Such scales occur in some shape on other Lobostemon species as well. Five pointed, lance-shaped, hairy sepals hold the flower base.

The plant is found from southern Namibia, inland in Namaqualand and south-eastwards across the Karoo and Little Karoo to the southern Cape coast, as well as some distance into the west of the Eastern Cape, a wider distribution than most Lobostemon species.

It grows on stony, clayey slopes and flats, abundantly in renosterveld. The species is not considered to be threatened in its habitat early in the twenty first century (Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2015; Manning, 2009; http://redlist.sanbi.org).