The buds of Tylecodon cacalioides are club-shaped, the clubheads elongated. The younger buds have their furled petal lobes slightly twisted.
Small bracts are present on the pedicels and flower stalk branches, dark and shrivelled but at least still there, unlike the leaves that are gone when the flowers of this plant appear (Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2015; Leistner, (Ed.), 2000; iNaturalist).