Description :

• Perennial shrublets or soft shrubs, occasionally reaching the stature of a small tree, usually leafless or nearly so at flowering stage
• Stems brittle or semisucculent, at first somewhat quadrangular and softly glandular-pubescent, terete and glabrescent with age
• Leaves small or large, those subtending inflorescence branches smaller towards apex of inflorescence, often semisucculent, variously pubescent, crenate-dentate, aromatic
• Inflorescences terminal, paniculate, often diffusely branched, ultimate branchlets spike-like (referred to as 'flower-spikes'); bracts small, ovate-deltoid to broadly ovate, imbricate in bud stage, caducous or semipersistent
• Flowers small, functionally unisexual or occasionally bisexual, in whorls of 4-10, sessile or shortly pedicellate, dense or lax, mauve or whitish
• Calyx minute, campanulate, 3-lobed, divided nearly to base below, upper lobe ovate, lateral lobes oblong, bifid or emarginate often giving calyx a 5-toothed appearance; in female flowers calyx enlarges slightly at maturity and upper lobe becomes erect
• Corolla small, tubular or funnel-shaped, limb spreading, asymmetrical, 4-lobed, upper lobe emarginate or bifid so that corolla may appear 5-lobed; lobes oblong, rounded, lowest usually the longest
• Stamens 4, free, erect or spreading, 0 in female flowers
• Disc 1- or 2-lobed
• Ovary present but usually infertile in male flowers; style exserted, deeply bilobed
• Nutlets oblong-triquetrous

Nomenclature:

• Tetradenia Benth.
  • Bentham: t. 1300 (1830)
  • Bentham: 164 (1833)
  • Bentham: 159 (1848)
  • Bentham: 1180 (1876)
  • Briquet: 331 (1897)
  • Codd: 177 (1983)
  • Codd: 113 (1985)
• Iboza N.E.Br.
  • Brown: 298 (1910)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 5 or 6, in tropical Africa and Madagascar
• Southern Africa : Species 3, N Namibia and Botswana, Northern Province, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape, widespread