Description:

• Shrubs or small trees, glabrous
• Leaves opposite, petiolate, ovate or elliptic, dentate or subentire
• Flowers many, pedicellate, bibracteolate and subfascicled in clusters in leaf axils, sometimes solitary or on old wood without leaves
• Calyx 3-5-cleft, very much shorter than corolla tube, cup-shaped or subrotate
• Corolla 4- or 5-lobed, ± bilabiate, sometimes regular; tube curved or straight, sometimes slightly gibbous at base in front, inflated above to funnel-shaped, oblique or not at mouth, pubescent within lower, cylindrical portion; upper lip 2-lobed, exterior in bud; lower lip shortly 3-lobed; lobes subequal, much shorter than tube
• Stamens 4, didynamous or subequal, exserted or shortly included; filaments filiform, arising subcentrally or lower in corolla tube; anthers bithecate; thecae diverging, at length divaricate; staminodes 0
• Nectary cushion-shaped
• Ovary bilocular, ovoid, with many ovules; style long, filiform, usually exserted, persistent; stigma simple or 2-lobed
• Fruit a globose, indehiscent berry
• Seeds compressed, narrowly winged, buried in jelly-like flesh

Nomenclature:

• Halleria L.
  • Linnaeus: 625 (1753) excl. var. ß
  • Hiern: 207 (1904)
  • Batten & Bokelmann: 133, t. 166 (1966)
  • Philcox: 16 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 10, Yemen, Madagascar, Africa; Ethiopia to Cape Peninsula, also in Angola
• Southern Africa: Species 3, widespread but not in Namibia or Northern Cape; in montane to riverine forest, scrub and bush