Description :

• Shrubs or trees
• Leaves opposite, relatively large, shortly petioled, penninerved; stipules united into a very short, tubular sheath, usually with many resiniferous glands within
• Inflorescence a terminal or pseudo-axillary corymb, rarely a panicle, or reduced to a few-flowered cyme
• Flowers fragrant, usually large and showy or medium-sized
• Calyx relatively small with several minute glands at base inside; sepals almost free, ovate, imbricate
• Corolla salver-shaped, usually white, often fleshy; tube cylindric, spindle- or barrel-shaped, widest at or below middle, sometimes twisted, naked in mouth, usually tomentose within; lobes overlapping to the left, as long as tube, elliptic, with a broad ear on one side
• Stamens included or shortly exserted, ± free or conniving into a cone inserted in widest part of tube, subsessile; filaments reduced to a callus swelling; anthers 4-locular, ovate-lanceolate, apiculate, sagittate at base
• Disc present or absent
• Ovary of 2 free carpels; style relatively short, compressed; stigma cylindric, grooved, with an entire or lobed, projecting rim or short frill at base and a minute 2-lobed apiculus, more rarely elliptic or globose, delicately papillose, not grooved, usually with a toothed rim at base and a conspicuous, 2-fid, papillose apiculus as long as or longer than rest of stigma; ovules many in each locule
• Mericarps 2, baccate, usually ± globose or ovoid, smooth or rarely keeled or warty, with milky latex
• Seeds many, embedded in a fleshy pulp, ± ellipsoid, deeply grooved ventrally, with many narrow grooves on back
• x = 11 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Tabernaemontana L.
  • Linnaeus: 210 (1753)
  • Codd: 268 (1963)
  • Leeuwenberg: 438 (1985)
  • Leeuwenberg: 1 (1991)
• Pandaca Noronha ex Thouars
  • Thouars: 10 (1806)
• Conopharyngia G.Don
  • Don: 98 (1837)
  • Stapf: 505 (1907)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 110, pantropical, 18 in Africa, 15 in Madagascar, 1 in Mascarene Islands
• Southern Africa : Species 2, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal