Description :

• Evergreen trees, shrubs or rhizomatous geoxylic suffrutices; wood with abundant silica inclusions
• Leaves alternate, simple, entire, coriaceous, lower surface with close, prominent, reticulate venation which delimits small stomatal cavities filled with hairs, sometimes with 2 glands on upper side of petiole or at junction of petiole with blade; stipules subulate or lanceolate, caducous or persistent
• Inflorescences axillary, many-flowered, complex cymes or cymose panicles; bracts and bracteoles eglandular, completely concealing flower bud
• Flowers bisexual, slightly irregular, strongly perigynous
• Calyx : tube (receptacle) turbinate and often obliquely bent or cup-shaped and ± unilaterally gibbous, hairy inside throughout; lobes 5, free, obtuse and imbricate or triangular-acute and sometimes subvalvate
• Petals 5, free, inserted in mouth of perianth tube, sessile or clawed, caducous
• Stamens 6-10 or more, sometimes unequal, inserted in throat of perianth tube, connate at base into a short ring or unilateral bundle, sometimes almost free, about as long as perianth lobes; filaments subulate-filiform, white; anthers small, dorsifixed, 2-thecous, dehiscing longitudinally and introrsely
• Ovary superior, adnate to one side of perianth tube; carpels 1, rarely 2 or 3, 2-locular, with a single, erect ovule in each locule, often villous; style arising at base of carpel(s), terete, often hairy, arcuate, included; stigma ± truncate
• Fruit drupaceous, 1-seeded, ellipsoid, obovoid or globose; epicarp verrucose; endocarp hard, thick, with a rough, fibrous surface, with 2 basal obturators
• Seed erect; endosperm 0
• x = 11 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Parinari Aubl.
  • Aublet: 514, t. 204-206 (1775)
  • Graham: 229 (1957)
  • Graham: 48 (1960)
  • Friedrich-Holzhammer: 1 (1968)
  • Prance: 178 (1972)
  • White: 265 (1976)
  • White: 36 (1978)
  • Prance & White: 107 (1988)
• Parinarium Juss.
  • Jussieu: 342 (1789)
  • Candolle: 526 (1825)
  • Endlicher: 1252 (1840)
  • Harvey: 596 (1862)
  • Hooker: 607 (1865)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 43, fairly cosmopolitan in tropics and subtropics, 6 in tropical Africa, of which 1 also in Madagascar
• Southern Africa : Species 2, Namibia, Botswana, the northern provinces, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal