Description :

• Small trees or shrubs; branchlets usually slightly ridged, glabrous to poorly scabrid
• Leaves alternate, often distichous, articulated with branches, sometimes small and squamiform, penninerved, glabrous
• Inflorescence a short, axillary spike or raceme, rarely flowers solitary; peduncle simple, rarely branched; pedicels articulate at their base
• Calyx cup-shaped, margin ± undulate, small in flower, but enlarging and almost enclosing fruit
• Petals 3 or 5(6), arising on a disc, free or slightly cohering, valvate, linear-spathulate, glabrous on inner surface, apiculate
• Stamens 3-6; filaments flattened, ± adnate to petals; anthers oblong; staminodes 5-12, 2-fid or -partite
• Ovary 1-3-locular at base, borne on a circular disc; ovules 1 per locule; style simple, relatively short; stigma capitate and (1-)3- or 4-lobed or subcapitate
• Fruit a globose or ellipsoid drupe, almost wholly enclosed by accrescent calyx; pericarp parenchymatose
• Seed with fleshy endosperm, containing oily substances
• x = 6 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Olax L.
  • Linnaeus: 34 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 20 (1754)
  • Brown: 357 (1810)
  • Bentham: 347 (1862)
  • Oliver: 348 (1868)
  • Engler: 239 (1889)
  • Sleumer: 24 (1935)
  • Garcia: 331 (1963)
  • Friedrich-Holzhammer: 1 (1967)
  • Lucas: 6 (1968)
  • Garcia & Vidigal: 5 (1979)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 40, palaeotropical, Africa, Madagascar, tropical Asia to Australia, 10 species in Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Olax dissitiflora Oliv., Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal