Description:

• Shrubs or trees, unarmed, glabrous; stems terete or angular; powdery yellow pigments in bark
• Leaves often alternate when young, becoming opposite with age, lamina dark green or greyish green and glossy above, paler beneath, coriaceous or subcoriaceous; stipules long, triangular-acicular, caducous
• Inflorescence a dichasium, 30-40-flowered, pedunculate
• Flowers bisexual; bracts acicular to triangular
• Sepals 5, ovate to semi-orbicular
• Petals 5, oblong, margin entire, whitish
• Disc fleshy, greenish, subentire with prominent sinuses at points where stamens arise
• Stamens 5; filaments ± united at base; anthers basifixed, versatile, latrorse
• Ovary 3-locular, ovoid, 2 ovules per locule; styles long
• Fruit a 3(4)-valved capsule, narrowly elliptic to tri- or tetragonous, apex truncate and slightly concave; valves usually with prominent sepal ridges on inner surface
• Seeds 1-3(4), elongate, trigonous, without or with a very reduced aril, rugose-papillose; endosperm fleshy

Nomenclature:

• Lydenburgia N.Robson
  • Robson: 35 (1965)
• Catha Forssk. ex Scop. in part
  • Codd: 124 (1966)
  • Van Wyk & Prins: 202 (1987)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 2, narrow endemics in Sekhukhuniland (Northern Province) and Pondoland (Eastern Cape)