Description :

• Woody climbers, erect shrubs or small evergreen trees
• Leaves alternate, distichous, simple, entire, penninerved, veins often prominent underneath; petiole short, articulated at base; dried leaves finely tubercled by cystoliths in mesophyll; stipules 0
• Inflorescences axillary, fasciculate in catkin-like racemes; bracts broadly ovate to orbicular, caducous
• Flowers bisexual, regular, small, solitary or in groups of 2 or 3 in axil of bract, sweet-scented
• Calyx minute, annular
• Petals 4 or 5, free, valvate in bud, may be taken for sepals due to reduction of sepals
• Stamens 4 or 5, opposite petals; anthers 2-thecous, introse, longitudinally dehiscent
• Disc with 4 or 5 fleshy lobes alternating with stamens
• Ovary superior, fusiform, free or almost so, 1-locular; ovule solitary, unitegmic and tenuinucellar, anatropous, pendulous from apex of a central placenta; style none or short; stigma entire or shallowly lobed
• Fruit a drupe; pericarp rather thin; mesocarp ± fleshy-juicy; endocarp woody or crustaceous
• Seeds large, conforming to the drupe; hilum basal, in a funnel-shaped cavity; embryo straight, terete, embedded in rich, oily endosperm, nearly as long as seed or shorter, with 3 cotyledons
• x = 10 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Opilia Roxb.
  • Roxburgh: 31, t.158 (1802)
  • Bentham: 350 (1862)
  • Oliver: 352 (1868)
  • Engler: 240 (1889)
  • Engler: 171 (1909)
  • Sleumer: 38 (1935)
  • Garcia: 336 (1963)
  • Heine: P20:1 (1967) [only one species]
  • Lucas: 1 (1968)
  • Hiepko: 161 (1982)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 2 (with 2 additional varieties) in tropical Africa, 1 species extending to tropical Asia, the Solomon Islands, N Australia
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Opilia campestris Engl. var. campestris , N Namibia