Mitrophyllum

Mitrophyllum is a genus of succulent plants of the family Aizoaceae, indigenous to the arid Richtersveld region, in the Northern Cape province of northwestern South Africa near the border with Namibia.

==Description== thumb|left|Mitrophyllum mitratum showing the papery sheath in which the new pairs of leaves are held before rains. thumb|left|Mitrophyllum clivorum. thumb|left|Mitrophyllum grande. 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.