Description :

• Shrubs or trees up to large size
• Leaves opposite, entire, scurfy-scaly, sometimes minutely and sparsely so
• Flowers in trichotomously branched, many-flowered, axillary or terminal panicles
• Calyx persistent, cupular, 4-toothed or shortly 4-lobed
• Corolla with short tube, 4-lobed, white
• Stamens 2, arising on corolla tube; anthers dorsifixed with extrorse dehiscence
• Ovary subglobose; stigma bilobed; ovules 2, pendulous
• Fruit a drupe, with thin, fleshy mesocarp; endocarp rather hard, with large seed cavity
• Seeds usually solitary, with endosperm
• x = 23

Nomenclature:

• Olea L.
  • Linnaeus: 8 (1753)
  • Harvey: 485 (1906/1907)
  • Verdoorn: 112 (1963)
  • Green & Kupicha: 69 (1979)
  • Kupicha: 323 (1983)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 50, Mediterranean region, Africa, Asia and Mascarene Islands
• Southern Africa : Species 4, widespread