Description :

• Trees or shrubs, unarmed, glabrous, often with conspicuous orange pigments in exposed bark
• Leaves opposite, lamina broadly elliptic, elliptic, or ovate to lanceolate, base acute to acuminate, apex rounded to slightly obtuse or acuminate, coriaceous, margin entire; venation usually conspicuous; petiolate; stipules minute, ± triangular, brown, marcescent
• Inflorescences pedunculate, compact dichasial, axillary; bracts minute
• Flowers bisexual, pedicellate
• Sepals (4)5, subcircular to depressed-ovate, margin fringed
• Petals (4)5, greenish white, ovate, sessile, margin entire, apex rounded
• Stamens (4)5, erect, arising in sinuses in margin of disc; anthers dorsifixed, introrse
• Disc subangular, with sinuses at point where stamens arise, flat
• Ovary ± a quarter immersed in and adnate to disc, 2-locular, 1 infertile, with 2-4 erect, collateral ovules per locule; style short; stigma discoid, style and stigma occupying a lateral position on growing fruit due to development of 1 locule only
• Fruit small, nut-like, ± ellipsoid with scar of stigma on one side below middle; pericarp thin, leathery, with fibrous bands arranged lengthwise on inside of pericarp
• Seeds dark brown, ellipsoid, elliptic to broadly elliptic; fleshy endosperm present; embryo erect, cotyledons fleshy

Nomenclature:

• Pleurostylia Wight & Arn.
  • Wight & Arnott: 157 (1834)
  • Davison: 342 (1927)
  • Loesener: 180 (1942)
  • Robson: 381 (1966)
  • Robson et al. 27 (1994)
  • Archer: 174 (1996)
• Cathastrum Turcz.
  • Turczaniniow: 448 (1858)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 3-5, with poor delimitation, in Africa, Mascarene Islands and Australasia; 1 widespread in Africa: Pleurostylia capensis (Turcz.) Loes.
• Southern Africa : Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape