Description :

• Trees, usually small in our area but sometimes very tall elsewhere, or rarely shrubs, without scales or microscopic stalked glands
• Leaves usually alternate, often crowded at ends of branches, sometimes on short shoots, rarely opposite, petiolate or subsessile, usually entire but occasionally subcrenate, often with 2 or more glands at or near base of lamina or on petiole
• Flowers usually bisexual and male in the same inflorescence (rarely all bisexual), usually in axillary spikes with male flowers towards apex and bisexual ones towards base, rarely in terminal panicles; male flowers stalked, stalks resembling pedicels but corresponding to lower receptacle with abortion of ovary; bisexual flowers sessile
• Receptacle divided into a lower and an upper part, often scarcely developed, expanding into a shallow cup terminating in sepals (or calyx lobes)
• Petals 0
• Stamens usually 10, exserted
• Disc intrastaminal
• Style free, not expanded at apex
• Ovary completely inferior
• Fruit a pseudocarp, very variable in size and shape but usually 2-winged, usually with an, at least partially, sclerenchymatous endocarp
• Seeds : cotyledons (where known) spirally convolute
• x = 12 (7, 13) (high polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Terminalia L.
  • Linnaeus: 674 ('638') (1767a)
  • Linnaeus: 21 (1767b) name conserved
  • Exell: 168 (1978)
  • Carr: 182 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 50, fairly cosmopolitan, throughout tropics and extending to subtropics
• Southern Africa : Species 7, widespread except in Free State, Lesotho, Western and Eastern Cape