Commicarpus pentandrus flowers

The small, bisexual flowers of Commicarpus pentandrus grow in spaced whorls of small umbels up a long, unbranched central stalk. A ring of pointed green bracts is present around the individual flower stalk bases of each whorl.

The green flower bases are cone-shaped and leathery. The dark pink to purplish corollas have funnel-shaped tubes, the five corolla lobes joined and the margin roundly curving. Flower diameter is about 1,5 cm in diameter.

The pale cream anthers are two-lobed, borne on long, pink filaments that are exserted far and curving. The specific name, pentandrus, means five stamens. Counting them on the flowers in the photo is challenging.

The flowers open in the afternoon and close during the evening. Flowering happens from mid-spring to early winter.

The fruit is ribbed and cone-shaped, broader at the top where it has a ring of sticky, brown glands and smaller ones reducing down the ribs to the stalk (Pooley, 1998; Leistner, (Ed.), 2000; Flowering Plants of Africa 63: 98–103 (2013) 99; iNaturalist).