Monsonia spinosa

Monsonia spinosa, commonly known as the yellow bushman candle or yellow candle bush and earlier scientifically as M. lheritieri, is a woody and succulent shrub reaching 70 cm in height. The previous botanical name recognised the 18th century French botanist and magistrate, Charles Louis LHéritier who first recorded this plant in his book Geraniologia (1792) under the name M. spinosa. 

In picture the hard, straight spines ascend, long and threatening around the thin stems. Each rounded leaf folds in along the central axis of its blade and becomes about 8 mm in diameter. The flowers are pale yellow.

The species is distributed from Lutzville in the Western Cape northwards through Namaqualand and the Richtersveld across the west of the Northern Cape into Namibia.

The habitat is succulent Karoo where the plants grow in rock cracks at the base of the granite domes that are the klipkoppe (stone heads), or in the deep, red, sandy soils derived from the granite. The species is not considered to be threatened in its habitat early in the twenty first century (Williamson, 2010; Le Roux, et al, 2005; iNaturalist; http://redlist.sanbi.org).