SUCCULENT SUNDAY: Avonia buderiana: tiny stems covered with papery white scales, tipped with fragrant white flowers

Also posted at Sentient Meat blog

Avonia recurvata ssp buderiana, new addition to Sentient Meat container garden
grown and sold by Woody Minnich of Cactus Data Plants

Which plants bewitch you? Which traits arouse the most passion? Even if pressed, I can't narrow my favorite plants down to just 10 or even 100, but I can tell you which traits amaze me. I am endlessly fascinated by plants which don't look like plants... or in some cases, don't resemble living things from the planet Earth.

Avonia buderiana is just such a plant. Its tiny branches reach upwards in haphazard, coral shapes (coralliform) covered with bizarre, overlapping, white, papery scales. These scales are actually modified leaf parts (stipules) which protect the tender branches and minute green leaves from heat, sun, and dehydration. Some Avonia live in quartz sands where their papery white scales blend visually with their habitat. All Avonia are dwarfs; A buderiana stems reach at most 80mm or scarcely over 3 inches in height.

The ephemeral white flowers sprout from the tips of the stems, usually 1 per stem. They open briefly in the heat of the day but are usually closed like tiny, out-worldly pincers.

Avonia buderiana grows wild in Helskloof, Richtersveld, in the Northern Cape of South Africa.

Dirt road and horizon, showing arid habitat
Helskloof, Richtersveld, Northern Cape, South Africa
photo by Sakkie on Panoramio

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Richtersveld Transfrontier National Park, South Africa official site

Court, Doreen. (Third Edition, 2010). Succulent Flora of Southern Africa. Cape Town, South Africa: Struik Publishers. ISBN-10: 1770075879. ISBN-13: 978-1770075870.

Photo from Spain plant vendor Cactus Serrano www.cactuserrano.es

View from Maerpoort with Rosyntjieberg in the background, Richtersveld National Park
Photo by Lex Hes, courtesy of, and copyright, South Africa Tourism, a department of the government of South Africa.