Trichodiadema mirabile flowers

Trichodiadema mirabile bears solitary, white flowers on short stalks from leaf axils and stem-tips. The sepals are bristle-tipped like the leaves.

There is one whorl of ascending and spreading, oblong, round-tipped petals around the flower centre, where staminodes cohere in a cone with the stamens. The five to eight stigmas in the flower base are shorter than the stamens. Nectar glands occur outside the ring of stigmas. Flowering happens from late spring to after midsummer.

The erect leaves of T. mirabile grow in opposite pairs, slightly fused at the base. The leaf is barrel-shaped, topped by the usual cluster of bristles or diadem that characterises the genus. In this species the diadems are whitish, based upon a nearly black platform and often inclined in unison.

The leaf surface is pale green to yellowish green. In picture some leaves are pale orange, stressed by prevailing conditions, some by age. The covering of tiny, pointed water cells on leaf surfaces is a common Trichodiadema feature (Smith, et al, 1998; Bond and Goldblatt, 1984; Wikipedia; iNaturalist).