Description :

• Shrubs, or small trees, often with upper branches scandent, rarely rhizomatous shrublets, unarmed; with or without latex
• Leaves opposite, subopposite or sometimes alternate, entire or toothed, petiolate; stipules free, deciduous
• Inflorescences pedunculate or sessile, cymose, dichasial or monochasial or fasciculate, simple, without accessory branches, axillary or extra-axillary
• Flowers bisexual or functionally unisexual
• Calyx 4- or 5-partite, imbricate; segments ovate, inner ones sometimes ± petaloid
• Petals (4)5(6), variously coloured, imbricate in bud, spreading, sometimes with membranous apex, sometimes adnate to disc
• Disc extrastaminal, thick, expanded or conical, often sinuate, sometimes of 5 transversely oblong lobes, variously united with other flower parts
• Stamens (2)3(4), arising inside disc, usually shorter than petals; filaments linear and sometimes globose at base or expanded and ovate, becoming reflexed; anthers versatile, extrorse or apical
• Ovary half-confluent with disc, 3-lobed, 3-locular, with 2-4(-8) ovules in 1 or 2 series in each locule; style long or short; stigma simple or 3-lobed
• Fruit baccate, fleshy, globose or 1-3-locular, soon becoming 1-locular by evanescence of dissepiments, 1-4(-20) seeds; exocarp supple or tough; mesocarp soft, fleshy; endocarp mucilaginous
• Seeds (pyrenes ?) usually large, angled or globose; integuments thin; germination hypogeal
• x = 14

Nomenclature:

• Salacia L.
  • Linnaeus: 159, 293 (1771)
  • Harvey: 230 (1860)
  • Robson: 391 (1966)
  • Robson et al.: 33 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 200, cosmopolitan in tropical regions
• Southern Africa : Species 5, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal; mainly in subtropical forest areas