Braunsia apiculata capsules among brown leaves

Braunsia apiculata leaf pairs may be discoloured brownish, depending on prevailing conditions. Their surfaces carry a faint white fuzziness from a covering of tiny, velvety hairs. Leaf tips veer outwards slightly from the central connecting seam that binds them in their lower halves.

Five-pointed fruit capsules, colour-coded according to age, are present at several stem tips. In each capsule there are well developed covering membranes over the seeds in the five locules that have valve wings, but no closing bodies.

The seeds of Braunsia plants differ from those of Lampranthus by being minutely spiny or somewhat so, the shape described as echinate; Echinus being a hedgehog (Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2010; Smith, et al, 1998; www.cactus-art.biz).