Lundi Star

The species is found to occur in Southern Africa, on the Lebombo Mountains and northern areas in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Swaziland. The range also extends to Zimbabwe and Mozambique

saundersii: named after Sir Charles James Renault Saunders (1857-1935), botanist who collected the first specimen in Natal, S Africa at the end of the 19th Century.

Low, succulent shrub, up to 2 m tall. Trunk short, swollen, sparsely branched; bark smooth, pale grey, wrinkled when dry; branches covered in long straight spines. Leaves spirally arranged up to 8 × 2.5 cm, narrowly obovate, thinly textured, hairless; apex mucronate; margin entire but wavy, often finely tuberculate. Flowers in condensed terminal heads, showy, c. 5 cm in diameter, white, often tinged pink or purple on the outside of the corolla. Fruit in pairs of horn-like follicles, up to 15 cm long. Seeds c. 7 mm long with an apical tuft of pale golden hairs up to 5 cm long.

S Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Northern province, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal, S Africa.

Pachypodium saundersii, the kudu lily, is a succulent plant of the family Apocynaceae. It was named in honour of Sir Charles James Renault Saunders (1857–1931), the Natal Province civil servant and casual plant collector.

It is found naturally in Southern Africa, on the Lebombo Mountains and other areas in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and Eswatini (Swaziland).

It is usually a small, shrubby bush, but can grow up to 1.5m tall. The plant is covered in paired, sharp thorns, and dark green shiny leaves, and it flowers annually producing masses of white flowers that have a pinkish/purplish tinge to them.