Description :

• Shrubs or sometimes small trees
• Leaves petiolate; usually with domatia as small tufts of hairs; bacterial nodules often present; stipules sheathing, overtopped by 2 awns, with silky hairs and colleters inside
• Flowers subtended by 2-4 bracteolar cups, each with 2 unequal pairs of awns; 1 or more flowers opposite in axils
• Calyx ellipsoid in bud, either open or closed with tip obtuse to apiculate, completely covering young corolla, deeply splitting between some lobes when flower opens
• Corolla salver-shaped, white, usually with silky indumentum outside; lobes spreading, contorted to left
• Stamens (5-)7-9, arising at throat; anthers basifixed; connectives broadly flattened
• Disc annular
• Ovary 2-locular, usually with 2 ovules on a pendulous placenta in each locule
• Style filiform, hairy or glabrous, exserted; stigma 2-lobed
• Fruit a red, nearly spherical drupe, at first crowned by persistent calyx often withering as fruit ripens
• Seeds either 1 per chamber and hemispherical or 2 per chamber and shaped like a quarter of a sphere; seed coat brown and striate; hilar scar apical-adaxial

Nomenclature:

• Sericanthe Robbr.
  • Robbrecht: 27 (1978)
  • Bridson & Verdcourt: 566 (1988)
• Tricalysia A.Rich. ex DC. in part

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 17, tropical Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Sericanthe andongensis (Hiern) Robbr. var. andongensis , Northern Province