Hermannia desertorum flowers

The small yellow and sometimes orange flowers of Hermannia desertorum are pendulous, growing from leaf axils near stem tips. Each has a thick, pinkish and hairy calyx with pointed lobes at the back, which in the case of pendulous flowers is at the top.

The corolla is curiously spiral-shaped. Delicately thin petals overlap each other with one lateral margin free, the other inside the narrow tube thus formed, around the five stamens and the greenish style concealed inside but accessible to their pollinators. The younger flowers provide less access to pollinators than the wider olde flowers (Shearing and Van Heerden, 2008; Bond and Goldblatt, 1984; iNaturalist).