Description:

• Unarmed trees
• Leaves bipinnate; rachis usually with a gland between each pair of opposite pinnae; pinnae each with one to many pairs of leaflets
• Flowers bisexual, many, sessile or nearly so, small, in slender spike in terminal panicles; bracts minute
• Calyx gamosepalous, 5-toothed, pubescent or puberulous outside, sometimes on margins only
• Petals 5, free, separated from gynophore base by a short perigynous zone, pubescent or puberulous outside, sometimes on margins only
• Stamens 10, alternately longer and shorter; filaments wrinkled in bud; anthers tipped by a small, stipitate, globular, fugaceous gland
• Ovary many-ovuled, densely pilose outside
• Pod broadly linear, compressed, straight or somewhat curved, at maturity dehiscing along one of the margins, valves remaining attached along the other, splitting neither transversely nor into layers
• Seeds flattened, oblong, surrounded by a membranous wing, elongated lengthwise in direction of pod
• x = 13 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Newtonia Baill.
  • Baillon: 721 (1888)
  • Brenan: 180 (1955)
  • Brenan: 23 (1959)
  • Brenan & Brummitt: 28 (1970)
  • Ross: 134 (1975)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 14, tropical Africa and America
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Newtonia hildebrandtii (Vatke) Torre; on sandy soils in tropical forests of N KwaZulu-Natal