Description :

• Trees and shrubs, glabrous or pubescent
• Leaves sessile or shortly petiolate, entire, or very rarely dentate, punctate, glabrous but often with lepidote scales when young
• Flowers bisexual or unisexual, in small fascicles on bare branches or in axils of leaves
• Calyx with sepals free or connate, often ciliate at margin, glandular or dotted
• Corolla longer than calyx, sometimes tube very short; lobes oblong to ovate, often papillose at margin, sometimes glandular-ciliate
• Stamens arising in throat of corolla; filaments 0; anthers sessile or subsessile, comparatively large, dehiscing by slits
• Ovary superior, globose or ellipsoid; style thick, sometimes obsolete; stigma variable in shape, elongated, scutate or capitate, sessile, often lobed or morchelliform; placenta with few ovules in 1 row
• Fruit dry or fleshy, 1-seeded with hard endocarp
• x = 12 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Rapanea Aubl.
  • Aublet: 46 (1775)
  • Mez: 342 (1902)
  • Phillips: 563 (1951)
  • Dyer: 6 (1963)
  • Kupicha: 203 (1983)
  • Halliday: 8 (1984)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 100, widely spread in tropical countries, and throughout most of Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 2: Rapanea melanophloeos (L.) Mez, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal, Western and Eastern Cape; R. gilliana (Sond.) Mez, Western and Eastern Cape