Description :

• Small trees or large shrubs; young branches often pubescent, terete or sometimes square
• Leaves opposite, elliptical, leathery
• Flowers in a 3-flowered dichasium or solitary, on new growth
• Calyx various, usually splitting irregularly down to ovary in anthesis, its tube (hypanthium) prolonged beyond summit of ovary, of 4 or 5 distinct teeth or lobes, completely closed in bud, or with an apical pore
• Petals 5, spreading, white
• Stamens conspicuous, many, in many series, much longer than petals; anthers versatile
• Ovary 2- to 7-locular, sporophores apparently arising from central axis of ovary, mostly connate in pairs and simulating stalked, axile, bilamellate placentae
• Fruit often fleshy, many-seeded, sometimes large and edible
• Seeds hippocrepiform or reniform, with bony testa and uncinate or curved embryo
• x = 11 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Psidium L.
  • Linnaeus: 470 (1753)
  • McVaugh: 385 (1963)
  • McVaugh: 404 (1968)
  • Proctor: 518 (1972)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 100, North America to Brazil
• Southern Africa : Species 2 or more naturalised in warm, moist parts of Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal