Description :

• Shrublets, shrubs, rarely small trees
• Leaves alternate, often ericoid or ovate to lanceolate, with revolute margins; stipules rarely present
• Flowers solitary, axillary or in spikes, racemes, or heads
• Calyx 5-lobed; lobes ovate to linear, often with a prominent median nerve or keel on inner face; tube variably expanded, usually with some type of pubescence
• Disc usually fused with calyx tube, variable
• Petals 5, rarely fewer or absent, small, clawed
• Stamens 5, inserted below petals; filaments short; anthers 1- or 2-thecous
• Ovary inferior, 3-locular; style minutely 3-lobed
• Fruit mostly capsular, crowned with persistent base of calyx
• Seeds ± 3-sided, smooth

Nomenclature:

• Phylica L.
  • Linnaeus: 195 (1753)
  • Sonder: 479 (1860)
  • Pillans: 3 (1942)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 188, Madagascar, 1 on Tristan da Cunha but mostly in southern Africa
• Southern Africa : Mostly in Western Cape, 2 extending further: Phylica thodei E.Phillips on the Drakensberg in Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and Lesotho, P. paniculata Willd. extending to North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal