Description:

• Shrubs or subshrubs; dioecious, rarely monoecious
• Leaves alternate, usually sessile or subsessile, sometimes ericoid; stipules small or 0
• Inflorescences axillary; male inflorescences composed of many-flowered, axillary fascicles; female inflorescences composed of few-flowered fascicles, or flowers solitary; pedicels varying in length, those of female flowers articulate
• Male flowers: sepals 5, united only at base, imbricate; petals usually ± as long as sepals, sessile or clawed, often with 1 or more glands at base within; disc of a single gland or of lobed glands at base of sepals; stamens 5; filaments connate into a tube; pistil rudimentary
• Female flowers: sepals and petals as in male; disc commonly only in 1 series; ovary spherical, 3-locular, with a single ovule in each locule, hairy or warted; styles free or shortly connate at base, bi-fid or -lobed, sometimes very short; stigmas often thick and laminated
• Fruit a usually woody capsule, subglobose, breaking into 3 partially loculicidal valves with woody endocarp, with thin septa partially adhering to columella
• Seeds ovoid, black, shiny, carunculate, with crustaceous testa; albumen fleshy; cotyledons broad, flat

Nomenclature:

• Clutia L.
  • Linnaeus: 1042 (1753)
  • Prain: 427 (1920)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 331 (1987)
  • Webster: 64 (1994)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 123 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 70, Africa and 2 in tropical Arabian Peninsula
• Southern Africa: Species 35, widespread