Hemimeris gracilis

Hemimeris gracilis, sometimes called the fine yellowface and in Afrikaans known as spokies (little ghosts), is a dwarf annual reaching 30 cm in height.

The opposite leaves grow spaced and stalked on soft, hairy stems. They are elliptic to ovate with toothed or slightly lobed or scalloped margins. The soft, pale green blades are hairy and sometimes reddish below. Leaf dimensions are about 15 mm long and 5 mm wide.

The long-stalked flowers grow from leaf axils. The calyces are unequally five-lobed, two sepals longer and pointed, the other three opposite and close together.

The cup-shaped corollas are four-lobed and two-lipped, the lower lip larger. There are two orange spots inside the cup on the upper lobes and two diverging and out-curving, tubular spurs at the lower back of each flower, about 5 mm long. The corolla is 5 mm in diameter. There are two sharply bent stamens per flower.

Flowering happens from before midwinter to after midspring.

The species distribution is inland in the Western Cape, from Ceres through the Little Karoo to Baviaanskloof in the Eastern Cape and in the far southwest of the Northern Cape. The photo was taken on Minwater near Oudtshoorn.

The habitat is diverse shrub vegetation where the plants grow in shaded, rocky places in moist lowlands, not in fynbos. The species is not considered to be threatened in its habitat early in the twenty first century (Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2015; iNaturalist; http://redlist.sanbi.org).