Lundi Star

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.