Description :

• Trees or shrubs, usually dioecious
• Leaves crowded at tips of branches, alternate, imparipinnate; leaflets petiolate, entire, usually acuminate
• Flowers sometimes bisexual, mostly unisexual, in spikes in male and solitary in female plants
• Sepals 4 or 5, oblong or orbicular, imbricate
• Petals 4 or 5, oblong or obovate, imbricate
• Disc depressed, entire, or somewhat raised in male flowers
• Stamens 10-16(-26), fewer in female flowers and apparently sterile
• Ovary 2- or 3(4)-locular, with a solitary, pendulous ovule in each locule; styles 2-4, distant, short, with peltate stigma
• Fruit a fleshy, pale green to yellow drupe; endocarp bony, with 1-4 ovate opercules at apex
• Seeds 2 or 3, obclavate with thin brown testa
• x = 13 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Sclerocarya Hochst.
  • Hochstetter: 1 (1844)
  • Sonder: 524 (1860)
  • Fernandes & Fernandes: 552 (1966)
  • Kokwaro & Gillett: 756 (1980)
  • Kokwaro: 42 (1986)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 2, Africa and Madagascar
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Sclerocarya birrea (A.Rich.) Hochst. subsp. caffra (Sond.) Kokwaro, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal