Asclepias vicaria

Asclepias vicaria, commonly the secret cartwheel, is a perennial reaching about 30 cm in height. The leaves are small and sword-shaped, up to 45 mm long and 25 mm wide.

The small flowers grow in rounded cream, yellow, pinkish or pale green clusters. The narrow, acutely pointed sepals are dark purple and hairy, smaller than the paler corolla. The spreading, star-shaped corolla has five pointed lobes, concave on the inside. The corona is five-lobed and green, white in the centre. Flowering happens in January.

The species distribution is in the northeast of the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the south of Mpumalanga.

The habitat is open grassland at elevations from 600 m to 1800 m. The habitat population is deemed of least concern early in the twenty first century (Pooley, 1998; iNaturalist; http://redlist.sanbi.org).