Description :

• Shrubs or small trees, with glabrous to densely velvety foliage
• Leaves paired, shortly petiolate, often quite large, elliptic, oblong, or somewhat rounded; stipules broad, connate at base, apex with linear or subulate appendage, villous within
• Flowers shortly petiolate; many together in axillary racemes or cymes; bracteate
• Calyx glabrous, or hairy, often persistent, 5-lobed; lobes ovate, longer than tube; tube saucer-shaped
• Corolla 5-lobed, yellow or greenish yellow, glabrous or hairy; lobes narrowly triangular, mostly reflexed; tube cylindric or campanulate, villous in throat, with a ring of deflexed hairs inside
• Stamens 5, arising in corolla mouth; shortly exserted; filaments linear, shorter than anthers; anthers oblong or ovate, often apiculate
• Ovary 5-locular, with a single pendulous ovule in each locule; style terete, sometimes swollen at base, shortly exserted; stigma thickened, cylindric, furrowed, minutely to distinctly 5-lobed at apex
• Fruit large, indehiscent, ± globose, often lobed or angular in dry state, usually 5-locular with 5 pyrenes, sometimes with persistent calyx, often edible
• x = 11 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Vangueria Comm. ex Juss.
  • Jussieu: 206 (1789)
  • Sonder: 13 (1865)
  • Hooker: 111 (1873)
  • Hiern: 146 (1877)
  • Robyns: 273 (1928)
  • Phillips: 729 (1951)
  • Verdcourt & Bridson: 848 (1991)
  • Bridson: 245 (1998)
• Tapiphyllum Robyns in part, as to T. parvifolium (Sond.) Robyns

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 27, tropical Africa and Madagascar
• Southern Africa : Species 5, widespread but absent from Western Cape