Anacampseros papyracea subsp. papyracea flower

The flower of Anacampseros papyracea subsp. papyracea grows solitary at a stem tip. The flowers are creamy white, becoming about 5 mm in diameter.

There are two sepals and five white almost round, concave petals. The green ovary is superior, surrounded by many erect, short stamens attached to the petal bases. The thickish, fleshy white filaments are topped by variously shaped yellow anthers in picture. The stamens are slightly taller than the three-lobed, white stigma on the nearly globose ovary. The seeds grow in the ovary from a central, free-standing placenta.

Note the rounded scale tips from behind the sessile flower overlapping the petals in the photo. The scales are thin and papery with elongated tips, the petals fleshy and shiny with longitudinal ridges along their surfaces, their tips blunt.

The flowers only open for a few hours in bright sunlight. Flowering happens late in spring. The fruit is a three-valved capsule (Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2010; www.llifle.com; Wikipedia).