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Drimia acarophylla, a new, inconspicuous, dwarf species from the Albany Centre
of Endemism in Eastern Cape, South Africa, is restricted to the Great Fish
River floodplain where it is found in small colonies on bare patches of
blue-grey pencil shale, where it is further camouflaged by the leaves
resembling engorged female blue ticks. It shows affinity to D. depressa (Bak.)
Jessop, which is known from the Eastern Cape to KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho,
Swaziland and Northern Province, in their shared capitate inflorescence and
spreading tepals but is distinguished by its terete, succulent, clavate leaves
with a cuticle of densely packed, multifaceted, erect wax platelets. Upon
fading the inner tepals close first and their papillate apices fuse with the
stigmatic papillae, the stamens wilt and the anthers connive with the style
just below the stigma.

South African Journal of Botany 2003, 69: 396–400