Description :

• Trees or shrubs; branches without spines; plants monoecious, dioecious or polygamous
• Leaves alternate, crenate to serrate, ± scabrous, often 3-nerved and asymmetrical at base, petiolate; stipules lateral, paired, free, caducous
• Inflorescences compact to lax axillary cymes or fascicles, 12-20-flowered, or flowers solitary
• Flowers mostly unisexual, yellowish green, appearing after leaves on new stems
• Perianth : lobes 4 or 5, shortly connate at base, subequal or outer slightly smaller, induplicate-valvate in bud
• Stamens 5, rarely 4; filaments shorter than perianth lobes, erect
• Ovary 1-locular, sessile, surrounded by a ring of hairs at base; styles 2, short, divaricate or incurved, unbranched, ± persistent
• Fruit a drupe, ovoid to subglobose and compressed; exocarp succulent; endocarp hard
• Seed with or without endosperm; cotyledons falcate, thick and narrow
• x = 10 (high polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Trema Lour.
  • Loureiro: 562 (1790)
  • Bentham: 355 (1880)
  • Engler: 65 (1889)
  • Rendle: 12 (1916)
  • Brown: 519 (1925)
  • Polhill: 143 (1964)
  • Wilmot-Dear: 3 (1991)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 15, in tropical and subtropical regions of Old and New World
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Trema orientalis (L.) Blume, Namibia, Northern Province, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape