Description :

• Small or medium-sized trees or occasionally shrubs, without scales or stalked glands
• Leaves opposite or subopposite, petiolate, entire, almost glabrous or hairy
• Flowers andromonoecious, bisexual and male in same inflorescence, 4- or 5-merous, pedicellate, in terminal and/or axillary or extra-axillary subcapitate racemes
• Receptacle : upper part campanulate, joined to lower receptacle by a slender stalk-like region; lower part somewhat flattened
• Bisexual flowers: sepals deltate, little developed; petals 4 or 5, usually ± obovate; stamens 8-10, often 2-seriate; disc pilose with a short free margin; style not expanded at apex
• Male flowers usually towards base of the inflorescence, as in bisexual ones but with ovary not developing and with a slender stalk replacing the lower receptacle (perhaps a true pedicel only towards base); style present or vestigial
• Fruit 2-5-winged, often decurrent into comparatively long slender stipe
• Seeds : cotyledons (where known) unfolding spirally and borne above soil level

Nomenclature:

• Pteleopsis Engl.
  • Engler: 25 (1894)
  • Engler: 293 (1895)
  • Exell: 162 (1978)
  • Carr: 28 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 9-11, all in tropical Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Pteleopsis myrtifolia (M.A.Lawson) Engl. & Diels, Botswana, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, and KwaZulu-Natal