Description :

• Trees or shrubs.
• Leaves alternate, narrowly elliptic or oblanceolate, serrated or sometimes incised, petiolate; stipules minute, caducous.
• Flowers bisexual, axillary, solitary, in few-flowered fascicles or racemes.
• Calyx 4-6-parted; sepals somewhat leathery, orbicular, concave, imbricate
• Petals 0
• Disc flat
• Stamens many, arising outside or towards margin of disc; filaments free, terete, longer than sepals; anthers short, without appendages
• Ovary superior, 1-locular, with few to several ovules on a single, parietal placenta; style short, stigma peltate
• Fruit a fleshy berry with ± 6 seeds
• Seeds obovoid or globose; testa incurved, crustaceous; endosperm thin; embryo incurved; cotyledons ovate
• x = 10

Nomenclature:

• Aphloia (DC.) Benn.
  • Bennett: 192 (1840)
  • Wild: 279 (1960)
  • Killick: 80 (1976)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 6, Tanzania to KwaZulu-Natal also Madagascar and Mascarenes
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Aphloia theiformis (Vahl) Benn., Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal