Pteronia succulenta

Pteronia succulenta is a single-stemmed, hairless shrub or shrublet reaching heights around 40 cm.

The simple, opposite leaves are stalkless. Their shape is oblong or slightly tapering to their tips. The blades are fleshy or succulent, smooth or wrinkled, flat on top and convex below, ascending from the stems. Leaf dimensions are 10 mm long and 3 mm wide.

The flowerheads grow solitary from stem-tips. They comprise only bunched disc florets subtended by cylindrical to bell-shaped involucres made up of a few rows of broadly ovate, leathery bracts. The bracts have membranous margins and are not sticky.

The white or creamy white disc florets are tubular, the five small corolla lobes of each floret out-curving and pointed. The stamens end in long, thin, yellow anthers, the style-tips branched, both in turn far exserted. Flowering happens in late spring and summer.

The fruits have pappus attachments consisting of long, orange brown bristles, sometimes shiny.

The species distribution is mainly in the Western Cape and a slight presence in the south of the Northern Cape, in Namaqualand. The photo was seen on the Minwater farm near Oudtshoorn.

The habitat is varied scrub in semi-arid conditions, the soil clayey or loamy. The species is not considered threatened in habitat early in the twenty first century.

The plant is often heavily browsed (Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2015; JSTOR; iNaturalist; http://redlist.sanbi.org).