Leaves
opposite or rarely ternate, petiolate or sometimes subsessile; stipules usually with a truncate to triangular base bearing a decurrent, slightly to very strongly keeled, sometimes foliaceous lobe, or less often lanceolate to ovate and soon caducous
Flowers
borne in sessile to pedunculate, clearly branched, umbellate cymes, or very rarely solitary; bracts and bracteoles usually inconspicuous
Calyx
with tube broadly ellipsoid; limb a truncate to dentate rim
Corolla
5-lobed, white to yellow; lobes reflexed, usually obtuse to acute; tube cylindrical, inside usually with a ring of deflexed hairs
Stamens
5, arising at corolla throat; filaments well developed; anthers lanceolate to narrowly ovate, attached shortly above base, reflexed
Ovary
2-locular, with 1 ovule per locule; style long, slender, exserted; stigmatic knob cylindrical, always longer than wide
Fruit
an ellipsoid to didymous drupe; pyrenes ellipsoid and flattened on ventral face
Nomenclature:
Psydrax
Gaertn.
Gaertner: 125 (1788)
Candolle: 476 (1830) in part
Bridson: 692 (1985)
Verdcourt & Bridson: 892 (1991)
Bridson: 345 (1998)
Mitrastigma
Harv.
Harvey: 20 (1842)
Distribution & Notes:
Global
: Species ± 100, Old World tropics
Southern Africa
: Species 4 in eastern regions, absent from S Namibia, North-West, Northern and Western Cape
References:
BRIDSON, D.M. 1985. The reinstatement of
Psydrax
(
Rubiaceae
, subfam.
Cinchonoideae
tribe
Vanguerieae
) and a revision of the African species.
Kew Bulletin
40
CANDOLLE, A.P. DE. 1830.
Prodromus
4. Treuttel & Würtz, Paris
GAERTNER, C.F. 1788.
De fructibus et seminibus plantarum
1. G.H. Schramm, Tübingen
HARVEY, W.H. 1842. Descriptions of several new genera of South African plants. In W.J. Hooker,
The London Journal of Botany
1
VERDCOURT, B. & BRIDSON, D.M. 1991.
Flora of tropical East Africa
.
Rubiaceae
(part 3)
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