Native to South Africa, Othonna triplinervia is a thick, evergreen, fleshy-stemmed (pachycaul) shrublets with short branches and leaves crowded at the tips. It grows in crevices and on ledges of sheer, east-facing aspects on mineral-poor quartzitic sandstone soil. Rainfall occurs during both winter (cold fronts) and summer (mainly thunder showers) and amounts to about 500–600 mm per annum. The average daily maximum temperature is about 26°C and the average daily minimum temperature is about 11°C. Winters are cooler but frost is rare or absent.
Common Names: Baboon's Cabbage Bush, Thicket baboon's cabbage
Stem (caudex): Shrubby carnose swollen at the base, glabrous, short, subsimple or forked up to 4 cm thick (or more) and 40 cm tall, the lower part nude (leafless), cicatricised; cicatrices glabrous.
Leaves: Crowded toward the apices, 6-7 cm long (comprising petiole), 2,5 cm wide, obovate, obtuse, tapering at base into a slender petiole, drying thin, from the middle 3-nerved, netted-veined, quite entire or repand; slightly fleshy when young, almost membranous, and pellucid if carefully dried.
Some of the information in this description has been found at desert-tropicals.com, llifle.com and cactus-art.biz
- Description
- Key Plant Features
Native to South Africa, Othonna triplinervia is a thick, evergreen, fleshy-stemmed (pachycaul) shrublets with short branches and leaves crowded at the tips. It grows in crevices and on ledges of sheer, east-facing aspects on mineral-poor quartzitic sandstone soil. Rainfall occurs during both winter (cold fronts) and summer (mainly thunder showers) and amounts to about 500–600 mm per annum. The average daily maximum temperature is about 26°C and the average daily minimum temperature is about 11°C. Winters are cooler but frost is rare or absent.
Common Names: Baboon's Cabbage Bush, Thicket baboon's cabbage
Stem (caudex): Shrubby carnose swollen at the base, glabrous, short, subsimple or forked up to 4 cm thick (or more) and 40 cm tall, the lower part nude (leafless), cicatricised; cicatrices glabrous.
Leaves: Crowded toward the apices, 6-7 cm long (comprising petiole), 2,5 cm wide, obovate, obtuse, tapering at base into a slender petiole, drying thin, from the middle 3-nerved, netted-veined, quite entire or repand; slightly fleshy when young, almost membranous, and pellucid if carefully dried.
Some of the information in this description has been found at desert-tropicals.com, llifle.com and cactus-art.biz