Grubbia

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Grubbia is a small group of flowering plants and the only genus in the family Grubbiaceae. It has three species: Grubbia rosmarinifolia, Grubbia rourkei, and Grubbia tomentosa, all found only in the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa. The plants are shrubs up to about 1.5 meters tall, with tiny flowers and slender, leathery leaves. Their fruit is a syncarp (a berry-like structure).

Grubbia was named by Peter Jonas Bergius in 1767, in honor of Swedish botanist Michael Grubb. In 1977 Sherwin Carlquist revised the group, treating what some had called Grubbia gracilis, G. hirsuta, and G. pinifolia as subspecies or varieties of G. rosmarinifolia.

Some authors once recognized a second genus, Strobilocarpus, but Carlquist moved its two species into Grubbia (as G. rourkei and G. tomentosa). Molecular studies show Grubbia is closely related to Curtisia, another South African genus. Because of that relation, some have suggested combining Grubbiaceae with Curtisiaceae, but the APG III system (2009) kept them separate.