Description :

• Trees or shrubs, often spiny, usually dioecious
• Leaves alternate, petiolate, mostly crenate
• Flowers unisexual, rarely bisexual, in short axillary racemes or solitary
• Calyx 4-7-partite or sepals free and imbricate
• Petals 0
• Male flowers : stamens many; filaments terete; anthers small, elliptic or somewhat quadrate, sometimes subdidymous
• Female flowers : stamens 0 or few; ovary surrounded by annular or interrupted disc, usually 4-8-locular with 2 superposed ovules in each locule; styles 4-8, short, thick, ± radiating, persistent; stigma retuse or marginate
• Fruit a berry, 5-16-locular
• Seeds obovoid or subcompressed; testa bony, rough; embryo straight; cotyledons flat, ovate; endosperm present
• x = 11 (9, 10) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Flacourtia L'Hér.
  • L'Héritier de Brutelle: 59 (1786)
  • Wild: 285 (1960)
  • Killick: 82 (1976)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 15, SE Asia, Malaysia, Polynesia, Madagascar, tropical and southern Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Flacourtia indica (Burm.f.) Merr., in Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape