Description :

• Shrubs or small trees
• Leaves often large, petiolate; domatia often present as hairy tufts in nerve axils; stipules green in dry state, ovate, deciduous
• Flowers in dense, axillary racemes or panicles
• Calyx 5-lobed; lobes subulate, linear or ovate, ± as long as tube; limb with distinct tubular part; tube campanulate or turbinate-oblong, sometimes truncate
• Corolla 5-lobed, white, glabrous; lobes narrowly elliptic or lanceolate, acuminate, contorted; tube long cylindric, sometimes somewhat filiform, hairy within
• Stamens 5, arising in corolla mouth, usually exserted; anthers linear, sessile, with curved or straight apiculus, sometimes bluntly sagittate
• Disc annular, cushion-like
• Ovary 1- or 2-locular, with many ovules; style filiform, exserted; stigma usually fusiform or clavate, or elliptic, usually bifid
• Fruit baccate, ellipsoid or ovoid, many-seeded, rarely with a single seed in each locule
• Seeds somewhat compressed, often transversely oblong, striate
• x = 11

Nomenclature:

• Oxyanthus DC.
  • Candolle: 218 (1807)
  • Sonder: 3 (1865)
  • Hooker: 91 (1873)
  • Hiern: 106 (1877)
  • Phillips: 727 (1951)
  • Hallé: 186 (1970)
  • Bridson & Verdcourt: 526 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 40
• Southern Africa : Species 4: Oxyanthus latifolius Sond. and 3 subspecies of 2 other species, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape