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A super succulent from North Cape Province, South Africa, Stomatium peersii, from Latin stoma = mouth, survives a very harsh climate, both in habitat and in my greenhouse. This species has not been studied very extensively and knowledge of it is rather sparse. However, it was always a very welcome dweller in my facility from 1979 and it never failed to thrive and to produce at least a few lovely yellow flowers regularly each year. My half dozen plants were always very regular, each with its new pair of leaves and a single, relatively large, feathery, fragrant flower about August. My notes of 1987 report them typically as branching with up to five 40mm (1 3/4"") stems, each with a rosette of 2 or 3 leaf pairs, and each rosette flowering
In habitat, the leaves are shorter than those in cultivation, a characteristic which evidently applies to all species. As well, very few photos I have seen depict this plant with leaves very wide open as they are here. Usually, the gap between the leaves is about equal to the thickness of a leaf, except when in bloom, but even then, the gap is not so very open as here, I have found no explanation for this, but perhaps the extra care and extra moisture that such exotics tend to receive in cultivation would suffice for an answer. Another character of many Stomatium species is their anisophylly (Greek = unequal leaves in pairs) which is quite evident in the photos here.