Description :

• Shrubs or small trees, occasionally suffrutices
• Leaves opposite, rarely ternate, sessile or petiolate; with some bacterial nodules usually at branching of veins; stipules with a triangular to truncate limb, connate at base or up to entire length, bearing a subulate arista, or less often a short mucro, sometimes with silky hairs within
• Flowers usually clustered in corymbs, umbels or heads, rarely in panicles, very rarely solitary
• Calyx 4(5)-toothed or 4(5)-lobed, sometimes nearly truncate, rarely accrescent; tube usually saucer-shaped
• Corolla 4(5)-lobed, white, glabrous; lobes somewhat variable in shape, shorter than tube; tube cylindrical to funnel-shaped, throat bearded or pubescent to glabrous
• Stamens 4(5), arising in corolla mouth, exserted; filaments shorter than anthers; anthers linear to oblong, acuminate or apiculate, usually sagittate
• Disc annular, fleshy
• Ovary 2-locular, with a solitary pendulous ovule (rarely 2) in each locule; style slender, exserted, twice as long as corolla, apical part thickened to club-shaped, shortly hairy, acting as pollen presenter, stigmatic surface confined to bidentate apex
• Fruit a spherical, slightly 2-lobed drupe, with 1(2) chartaceous pyrenes
• Seeds semiglobose
• x = 11 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Pavetta L.
  • Linnaeus: 110 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 48 (1754)
  • Sonder: 19 (1865)
  • Bremekamp: 1 (1934)
  • Bridson & Verdcourt: 619 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 400, Old World tropics
• Southern Africa : Species 21, widespread, absent from S Namibia, Northern and Western Cape