Description :

• Trees, shrubs or suffrutices
• Leaves simple, rarely compound, subsessile or petiolate
• Flowers bisexual; axillary, solitary or fascicled; bracts many
• Calyx with campanulate tube, 5-lobed
• Petals 5, narrowed into a long claw
• Disc small or 0
• Stamens 7-10(20); filaments connate into a long, slender tube widening upwards; tube 10-toothed or -lobed, sometimes with lobes fimbriate or 2-partite or -notched; anthers usually shortly apiculate
• Ovary sessile, sometimes ribbed, with (3)4-10(20) locules, with 2 collateral or superposed ovules in each locule; style exserted, filiform; stigma discoid, capitate, or globose
• Fruit a (3)4-10(20)-locular loculicidal capsule with each locule 1- or 2-seeded
• Seeds red or black, subglobose with ± conspicuous orange, red or whitish aril
• x = 25?

Nomenclature:

• Turraea L.
  • Linnaeus: 150 (1771)
  • Sonder: 244 (1860)
  • White & Styles: 307 (1963)
  • White & Styles: 41 (1986)
• Nurmonia Harms
  • Harms: 80 (1917)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 50, in Africa, Madagascar Mascarenes and the Comores, and 1 widespread species in the tropical Far East
• Southern Africa : Species 6, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape to near Alexandria