Description:

• Shrubs or small trees, unarmed
• Leaves thickly coriaceous, opposite or subopposite, simple, entire, subrotund to lanceolate or oblanceolate; axillary glands 0 or minute; stipules 0
• Inflorescence axillary, usually much contracted, many-flowered, shortly pedunculate or sessile, corymbose or shortly racemose
• Flowers subsessile, white or tinged with pink, scented
• Calyx small, divided almost to base, eglandular within; lobes imbricate, ovate, acute
• Corolla salver-shaped; tube cylindric, slightly widened at mouth, much longer than calyx, hairy within; lobes much shorter than tube, overlapping to the left
• Stamens enclosed in widened part of tube; filaments terete; anthers 4-locular, ovate-oblong, mucronate, sometimes pilose at apex, shortly 2-lobed at base
• Disc 0
• Ovary entire, 2-locular, with a single, pendulous ovule in each locule; style filiform; stigma at level of anthers, conic or cylindric, with a ring of papillae at base and a minutely 2-lobed hairy tip
• Fruit a globose to ellipsoid berry
• Seeds 1 or 2, black or brown, elliptic, somewhat flattened
• x = 11

Nomenclature:

• Acokanthera G.Don
  • Don: 485 (1838)
  • Stapf: 499 (1907)
  • Codd: 245 (1963)
  • Kupicha: 41 (1982)
  • Kupicha: 404 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 5, from Yemen through E Africa to Cape region
• Southern Africa: Species 3, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal, Western and Eastern Cape