Description:

• Shrubs, functionally dioecious or polygamo-dioecious, much-branched, up to 3 m high
• Leaves broadly to narrowly elliptic, acute or obtuse, usually toothed in the apical half, glabrous, coriaceous
• Flowers very small, subsessile, often unisexual, borne in few-flowered axillary fascicles
• Calyx free or shortly connate at base, margin usually ciliate, sometimes glandular
• Corolla longer than calyx; tube short; lobes 4 or 5, often ciliate and glandular
• Stamens included in or exceeding corolla; filaments present, arising from below mouth of corolla tube; anthers often longer than filaments, dehiscing by slits
• Ovary superior, ovoid or ellipsoid, glabrous; style short, cylindric; stigma large, disciform or with incised margin; placenta with few ovules in 1 row
• Fruit a globose, 1-seeded, fleshy drupe with crustaceous endocarp
• Seed subglobose, with ruminate endosperm
• x = 23 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Myrsine L.
  • Linnaeus: 196 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 90 (1754)
  • Mez: 338 (1902)
  • Harvey & Wright: 434 (1906)
  • Phillips: 563 (1951)
  • Dyer: 5 (1963)
  • Kupicha: 201 (1983)
  • Halliday: 6 (1984)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 7, from Africa to E Asia
• Southern Africa: Species 2: Myrsine africana L., Northern Province, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Western and Eastern Cape; M. pillansii Adamson, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape