Description :

• Trees or shrubs, sometimes decumbent or with rhizomes, often spinescent
• Leaves alternate, petioled, entire or toothed, palmately veined
• Flowers small, in short, axillary cymes
• Calyx 5-fid; lobes keeled within
• Petals 5(0), shorter than sepals, spatulate, usually clawed
• Disc flat, 5- or 10-angled, adhering to calyx tube
• Stamens 5, inserted outside disc, reflexed
• Ovary superior, immersed in disc, 2(3 or 4)-locular; styles 2 or 3, free or connate; stigmas papillose
• Fruit a drupe, sometimes the size of a cherry
• Seeds usually solitary, suborbicular or elliptic, compressed
• x = 12 (10, 13) (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Ziziphus Mill.
  • Miller: [1547] (1754)
  • Sonder: 475 (1860)
  • Drummond: 419 (1966)
  • Johnston: 23 (1972)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 86, mostly in E Asia and East lndies
• Southern Africa : Species 6, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern and Eastern Cape