Description :

• Trees or suffrutices, apparently dioecious
• Leaves imparipinnate; leaflets entire
• Flowers unisexual; in cymose panicles
• Calyx 5-lobed
• Petals 5, imbricate
• Disc fused to base of staminal tube
• Stamens 10; filaments connate in lower half, free portion often densely villous, with a pair of lateral appendages at apex
• Ovary small, sometimes adnate to disc; 2-4-locular with 2 collateral ovules in each locule, villous; style short or long, terete, villous; stigma capitate, globose, or 2-4-lobed
• Fruit a coriaceous 2-4-locular, 3-valved loculicidal capsule, with 1 or 2 seeds in each locule
• Seeds large, mostly covered with red fleshy aril
• x = 25? (23) (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Trichilia P.Browne
  • Browne: 278 (1756) name conserved
  • Sonder: 246 (1860)
  • White & Styles: 297 (1963)
  • White: 157 (1986)
  • White & Styles: 53 (1986)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 85, fairly cosmopolitan in tropics and subtropics, concentrated in America, 15 in Africa, 2 in Asia
• Southern Africa : Species 2, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Province