Description :

• Scandent, pilose subshrubs, freely branched, with rather stiff branches
• Leaves clustered at nodes to form false whorls, usually linear, sometimes lanceolate; stipules free, scarious
• Inflorescences dense, subsessile, axillary cymes, surrounded by white, scarious bracts, and each flower subtended by a bracteole; after anthesis each cyme forms a fleshy (berry-like) infructescence due to swollen bracts and peduncles
• Flowers bisexual, perigynous, sessile; receptacle cupuliform, as long as sepals
• Sepals 5, free, small
• Petals 5, minute, scale-like, white
• Stamens 1 or 2, inserted on 5-lobed nectary disc
• Ovary 1-locular; ovules 2, basal, on short funicles; style 1, filiform, persistent
• Fruit 1-seeded, indehiscent, enclosed by persistent calyx and borne with several other fruits in milky white to reddish brown berry-like infructescence in which rachides and lower parts of bracts are enlarged and fleshy
• Seeds 1 or 2, ± ovoid; embryo curved
• x = 9 (1 report, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Pollichia Aiton
  • Aiton: 5 (1789) name conserved
  • De Candolle: 377 (1828)
  • Sonder: 133 (1860)
  • Hooker: 14 (1880)
  • Pax: 89 (1889)
  • Lüders: 26 (1907)
  • Baker & Wright: 10 (1909)
  • Turrill: 11 (1956)
  • Wild: 358 (1961)
  • Podlech: 2 (1966)
  • Wild & Diniz: 2 (1973)
  • Bittrich: 224 (1993)
  • Gilbert: 96 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Monotypic: Pollichia campestris Aiton, from northern Arabian Peninsula and Ethiopia, through east tropical Africa to southern Africa
• Southern Africa : All countries and provinces except Western Cape