Description :

• Trees or shrubs, often aromatic, dioecious, with indistinct oil cavities in younger parts
• Leaves opposite or subopposite, paripinnate; rachis slightly winged; leaflets asymmetrical, opposite; stipules 0
• Flowers unisexual, regular, in contracted thyrses
• Sepals 4, variously connate or almost free; lobes imbricate or with open aestivation
• Petals 4, free, valvate or imbricate
• Disc annular, intra-staminal, fleshy
• Male flowers : stamens 4, arising at base of disc; ovary 0
• Female flowers : staminodes rudimentary; ovary superior, arising on disc, 2-locular, with a solitary ovule in each locule; styles 2, free or connate; stigmas capitate
• Fruit a compressed capsule, bilobed from apex, cordate at base, 2-locular, 2-seeded, dehiscing along an inner suture, eventually suspended from bipartite axis
• Seeds compressed, with a terminal wing

Nomenclature:

• Ptaeroxylon Eckl. & Zeyh.
  • Ecklon & Zeyher: 54 (1834-35)
  • Sonder: 242 (1860)
  • White & Styles: 548 (1966)
  • Friedrich-Holzhammer: 3 (1968), under Meliaceae
  • White & Styles: 35 (1986)
  • Verdcourt & Davies: 1 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 1: Ptaeroxylon obliquum (Thunb.) Radlk. (= P. utile Eckl. & Zeyh.), southern half of Africa
• Southern Africa : Botswana, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape; widespread in forests and scrub bush southwards to Humansdorp