Description:

• Shrubs or woody climbers, climbing by sensitive inflorescences or tendrils (modified inflorescences), rarely dwarf shrubs or undershrubs, glabrous or hairy; sap milky
• Leaves leathery, opposite, shortly petioled, penninerved; axillary glands minute, obscure, or subulate to filiform; stipules 0
• Inflorescence terminal, many-flowered, corymbose or paniculate
• Flowers small to medium-sized, sessile or pedicelled, white or often tinged with red or purple, scented
• Calyx small, leathery, eglandular, divided almost to base
• Corolla salver-shaped; tube ± narrowly cylindric, widened and staminiferous near base or sometimes near or above middle; mouth somewhat constricted, glabrous; lobes overlapping to the left, usually longer than tube
• Stamens 5; filaments short; anthers 4-locular, ovate to lanceolate, dehiscing to minutely 2-lobed base
• Disc 0
• Ovary entire, 1-locular, glabrous or hairy; ovules many from 2 parietal placentas; style terete; stigma level with base of anthers, conical from a thickened base, shortly bifurcate
• Fruit a globose or pear-shaped berry, up to size of a small orange
• Seeds few or many, embedded in pulp
• x = 11

Nomenclature:

• Landolphia P.Beauv.
  • Beauvois: 54, t. 34 (1806) name conserved
  • Stapf: 492 (1907)
  • Codd: 258 (1963)
  • Kupicha: 408 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 55, Africa and Mascarene Islands
• Southern Africa: Species 3, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Northern Cape