Description:

• Unarmed trees or shrubs
• Leaves paripinnate; leaflets usually in 3-18 pairs, coriaceous, lower usually smaller than upper; stipules small, deciduous
• Inflorescence a short lateral or terminal panicle or raceme, sometimes produced from old wood, many-flowered
• Flowers bisexual, red or pink; bracts caducous
• Calyx turbinate or subcampanulate, with 4 imbricate lobes longer than tube, persisting in fruit
• Petals 5, or, in S. brachypetala, some or all petals reduced to linear filaments, arising in mouth of calyx tube, somewhat unequal, imbricate
• Stamens 10, arising with petals, free or connate at base
• Ovary somewhat unequal-sided, with stalk adnate to calyx tube, many-ovuled; style terete, with terminal, capitate stigma
• Pod often woody, oblong or broadly linear, often falcate, sometimes beaked, compressed, with a hard margin or wing along upper suture, which persists, often with seeds attached, poorly dehiscent
• Seeds compressed-orbicular, with funicle small or sometimes expanded into a fleshy, cup-like aril
• x = 12

Nomenclature:

• Schotia Jacq.
  • Jacquin: 93 (1787) name conserved
  • Harvey: 273 (1862)
  • Codd: 515 (1956)
  • Hutchinson: 240 (1964)
  • Ross: 23 (1977)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 5, restricted to Africa south of the Zambesi River
• Southern Africa: Species 4, Namibia, the four northern provinces, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and through Eastern Cape to Riversdale area in Western Cape