Description:

• Slender scrambling shrubs or lianas, unarmed, glabrous; bark greyish or light brown, periderm persistent with no sequential periderm formation observed, phellem, 1-1.5 mm thick, with conspicuous orange pigment in slash, surface ± smooth
• Branchlets terete or flattened, greyish brown
• Leaves usually opposite or alternate on young shoots, occasionally bracteose on climbing shoots; lamina elliptic to broadly elliptic to oblong, very large, bluish green, glossy on both surfaces, base rounded to cuneate, apex rounded to retuse, rarely acute, margin entire or remotely glandular-crenulate, rigidly coriaceous; venation conspicuous on both surfaces, fine reticulation sometimes more conspicuous above, indistinctly brochidodromus; petiolate; stipules minute, ± triangular, brownish black, caducous
• Inflorescences pedunculate, compact dichasial with flowers sessile, axillary, 1-10 per inflorescence; bracts minute, bracteoles occasionally present
• Flowers bisexual
• Sepals 5, greenish with reddish cilia, ovate, thick, coriaceous, margin ciliolate
• Petals 5, yellow-green, narrowly obovate, erect, sessile, apex rounded, margin entire
• Disc fleshy, entire
• Stamens 5, erect; filaments relatively long, flattened, arising from and united at base with margin of disc; anthers basifixed, introrse
• Ovary ± immersed in and adnate to disc, 2-locular, with 2 erect collateral ovules per locule; stigma inconspicuously lobed
• Fruit baccate, red, ellipsoid, up to 32 X 20 mm, mesocarp fleshy
• Seeds black, narrowly ellipsoid; fleshy endosperm present; embryo erect, with cotyledons fleshy, narrowly elliptic

Nomenclature:

• Allocassine N.Robson
  • Robson: 30 (1965)
  • Codd: 124 (1966)
  • Robson: 379 (1966)
  • Archer & Van Wyk: 189 (1998)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Monotypic: Allocassine laurifolia (Harv.) N.Robson, occurring in dry forest and forested ravines in the eastern parts of Zimbabwe, southern parts of Mozambique and southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape