Description :

• Shrubs or smallish trees
• Leaves serrate, very rarely entire, 3-7-nerved at base; stipules lateral
• Flowers in terminal or axillary panicles or in leaf-opposed or axillary umbel-like cymes
• Sepals 5, linear-oblong or linear-spathulate, stellately hairy outside, coloured like petals within
• Petals 5, shorter than sepals, yellow, pink, mauve, purplish or white, mostly with a nectariferous claw at base
• Stamens indefinite, free, usually raised on a torus or androgynophore which is short and glabrous or produced above into a pubescent extension
• Ovary 2-4-locular, entire or 2-4-lobed, with 2-many axile ovules in each locule; style longer than ovary with subulate or flattened lobes or almost entire
• Fruit a 1-4-lobed drupe with 1-4 pyrenes; mesocarp somewhat fleshy or fibrous; endocarp hard and woody
• x = 9 (polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Grewia L.
  • Linnaeus: 964 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 412 (1754)
  • Candolle: 508 (1824)
  • Harvey: 224 (1860)
  • Wild: 1 (1984)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species > 400, widely distributed in Africa, Asia and Australia
• Southern Africa : Species 27, in all countries and provinces