page_title: Mitrophyllum
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Mitrophyllum / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: Mitrophyllum clivorum, in the United States Botanic Garden, Washington, DC, USA.
context_page_description: Mitrophyllum is a genus of succulent plants of the family Aizoaceae, indigenous to the arid region around the Richtersveld, on the border of South Africa and Namibia.
context_section_description: The species generally grow stems, at the top of which two succulent leaves appear. Similar to the closely related genera of Monilaria and Meyerophytum, these leaf-pairs alternate consecutively between two different types of leaf-growth (heterophylly) and during the exceptionally hot summer they remain inactive in a dry sheath. When fused together into a cone-shaped corpuscle, this leaf pair is referred to as the plant's "mitre", and this is the origin of the genus name. 
  The two separate leaves of the free leaf-pair are rounded-triangular to tongue-shaped. The fused leaf-pair forms a cone-shaped to cylindrical corpuscle, which bears two smaller ear-like anthers at the top. This fused corpuscle dries out in the plant's dormancy period, eventually becoming a papery sheath in which the new (separate) leaf-pair forms.
caption: Mitrophyllum clivorum.
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